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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   29767 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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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.

... 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?"

I disagree this is in conflict with the liberal (i.e. pro-illegal-immigrant wellbeing) position.

Allowing the illegal immigrant to stay in the country is clearly in their interest. No matter how bad the conditions are, we know this is a good deal for them, because their revealed preference is to stay in the country as an illegal.

They are only "underpaid" relative to a legal citizen. But the liberal isn't able to give them citizenship - so trying to get society to look the other way and let them stay is the next best thing. And ditto for exploitation.

In general I find this line of thinking - in which it constitutes "exploitation" to give someone in a really bad situation a kinda bad option - very odd. See also:

  • It is morally neutral to just not help some random homeless woman (we're both doing it right now)
  • It is (extremely) virtuous to give her money, no-strings-attached, so she can get off the streets and back on her feet.
  • It is villainous (worse than just not helping at all) to do the above via hiring a prostitute. Even though she prefers to make the trade, this constitutes "exploitation".

The end result of this logic seems to incentivise avoiding interacting with suffering people at all.

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.

The problem with that is it eliminates the price incentive to find better ways of doing those shitty low-wage jobs. No VC will invest money into a startup trying to replace sub-$10/hour migrant hotel maids with robots. At $25/hour? Suddenly that's a lot more space to capture value.

Just as an example of this dynamic, look at touchscreen ordering in fast-food restaurants and self-checkout machines. The technology had been there already for 10+ years, what made it finally hit mass adoption was the point where the marginal hourly cost of a unit and its maintenance went below the cost of a worker by a significant enough margin that stores were willing to annoy their customers for a bit as people got used to it. I'd personally rather have an economic makeup that has fewer low-wage jobs and more engineers figuring out automation rather than an underclass of serfs that are paid so poorly (yet subsidized by the taxpayer) that they are impossible to displace.

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.

“Rolled back regular room cleanings posts covid”

Where did our workers go between pre and post covid? The illegal immigrant surge occurred post COVID - during the Biden administration. Somehow pre-COVID we had a lot of workers. Post Covid despite a surge in supposedly illegal workers we had an accute lack of labor?

It seems like wages have doubled since Covid but we have a lack of workers. Where did everyone go?

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If you offer six figures to work as a janitor, of course you'll get people willing to do it. But the end result of that is far fewer janitors, not janitors getting a pay raise. There simply isn't a world where general construction laborers are all making well above average salaries, although there is a world in which construction is completely unaffordable. Drywallers, hotel maids, etc are not suddenly going to be making offshore-rig wages- although there might be no drywallers or hotel maids.

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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.

You could solve the equation from either side and get the same result. Presumably, if you remove immigrants from the equation, then either we'll have highly-paid janitors or no janitors at all. And if this is an unworkable situation, then supply of underpaid servants, sufficiently desperate for work will be increased by political means, perhaps by cutting from various social safety nets, encouraging wealth inequality to foster an indigenous servant class. We'll go back to a time where maids and butlers were feasibly affordable.

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.

I mean, the 'root cause' is mostly that social and economic conditions suck in other countries in both absolute terms and relative to the U.S..

In the purely materialist interpretation, its the same reason wind moves along a gradient from areas of high pressure to low pressure.

"Fixing" the root cause in that case would imply raising economic standards in those other countries (has been tried). Lowering economic standards in the U.S., or, maybe, just sprinkling enough excess U.S. wealth around that its marginally more attractive to stay put than to immigrate.

Or, if we don't find those methods feasible, imposing enough barriers that the flow is actually slowed down to a manageable extent.

And given how border crossings have slowed to a trickle with Trump in office, I'd say the barriers don't even have to be that imposing.

Anyway, lets say we do put a few CEOs in jail and this convinces other CEOs to avoid hiring illegals, which has a noticeable effect on, e.g. self-deportations.

What happens when the next Democratic president pardons them all, and then re-establishes the same status quo which allows them to hire illegals with relatively little concern for enforcement?

How do you get immigration restriction locked in at the political level?

I humbly suggest you gotta do more than merely slapping the employers around.

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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?

I mean, any large agri-business, large construction company (which adds another layer, they work through contractors), restaurant chains etc.

That's the flip side. A lot of the employers are small businesses themselves, so there'll be a lot of them, and thus enforcement efforts are going to be a bit more involved to catch any significant number of them.

This is something you'd really want to solve on the systems level, similar to the demand for voter ID in elections.

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

This is really lazy, right? Trump could easily change the "reasonably genuine" wording and just have employers only submit real proof of citizenship/visa status when they resister for employer-paid payroll taxes. That's how every single other first word country does it.

And sure, even then you're left with is millions of people working without anybody collecting employer-paid payroll taxes of their work, you're dealing with millions of "independent contractors" and the standard off-the-books shadow economy. But at least then you can nail them all for tax evasion. Keeping millions of people off the books and hiding envelopes of cash being passed around is a whole lot harder than just going "oops, I couldn't possibly have known, that would have been discriminatory and/or retaliatory! It's the liberals fault!"

I agree the law should be changed. I was disagreeing that Trump could simply enforce existing law.

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.

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