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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   29123 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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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.

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.

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.

It's probably unlikely that we'll end up with zero janitors, general construction workers, drywallers, or hotel maids. Prices find equilibria. Both supply and demand matter.

the end result of that is far fewer janitors, not janitors getting a pay raise.

Adding illegal workers shifts the supply curve to the right; removing illegal workers shifts the supply curve to the left (at a first approximation in the linear range). Both elasticities will matter, but the only way that you can shift the supply curve to the left and not have the price rise is if the demand for janitors is almost perfectly elastic. That seems unlikely.

As I mentioned, removing illegal immigrants very likely has both the effects of increasing price and decreasing output. That is, both increasing wages and decreasing jobs. The proportion depends on elasticities as well as factors in the rest of the general equilibrium, as the market adjusts.

Nothing in anything I've said has any claims on which occupations will or will not make "well above average salaries". That will be up to the market to decide. What counts as "completely unaffordable" is also subjective, but could in theory be supported by quantitative estimates. Prices will rise; wages will rise (they are prices, after all); output will fall; jobs will fall. This is all very standard economic theory and not really contestable. Any other statements about magnitudes of effects require quantitative argumentation.

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.

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.

I don't propose we only slap employers around. I propose that if we don't address employers at all, the effort is largely wasted. Even without a future Democratic administration opening the borders again, employers who are not disincentivized will just continue to encourage illegal immigrants to replace the ones who were deported. The level of violence you'll have to inflict to really scare people out of coming is more than most Americans would stomach.

I think we disagree on which steps are both necessary and sufficient.

However I do think that punishing employers is necessary both from a practical and "upholding rule of law" perspective.

is more than most Americans would stomach.

For better or worse (almost certainly worse) I think Americans are learning just how much they can stomach and how sharp but limited application of violence actually gets things done.

I think Americans have gotten less stomach for lawlessness and even basic property destruction after living through Covid times.

This isn't to say they're going to side with the government, but I see a general preference for order rather than chaos, and that can justify violent action.

(contingent on how long most Americans can actually pay attention to anything or really have an awareness of the situation outside their local area)

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.

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