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Do Desantis fans actually want illegal immigrants to leave their state?
Desantis could get most illegal immigrants to leave Florida if he really wanted to. Illegal immigrants generally need to work. If an area made it so they could not find work, most illegal immigrants would leave that area. You can make it hard to find work for illegal immigrants by passing severe and immediate penalties for employers that employ illegal immigrants, and boosting the agencies investigating such crimes. For maximal effect, the severe penalities would include jailtime.
If he wanted to, Desantis could sign such a bill in no time at all. Instead he's flying illegal immigrants to Martha's Vineyard.
To be fair, he did sign a law 2 years ago that made e-verify mandatory. That was the headline at least. More specifically, it made e-verify mandatory for public employers and their contractors. Private employers are required to keep I9 documentation for some years if they don't use e-verify. And if you get caught 3 times in 36 months, the employer can lose their licensure. Florida otherwise appears to treat the 1st instance of employing an illegal immigrant as a non-criminal offense, and the 2nd instance as a misdemeanor. In conjunction with loose enforcement activities, this is not how you strenuously deter employers from hiring illegal immigrants. Anyone who cares a out getting rid of the illegal immigrants in their state should be able to see that.
Of course, strongly penalizing the people who employ illegal immigrants would annoy those people. And at least a substantial portion of those people who would be annoyed are Desantis supporters.
So I see why Desantis likes putting illegal immigrants on a plane: it doesn't offend his employer constituency, and it appeals to the anti-illegal-immigrant constituency.
What I don't get why a ordinary joe (or a mottizen) who is concerned about illegal immigration would treat this as anything other than a stunt designed to distract them from Desantis prioritizing business interests over actually dealing with the problem.
Actually enforcing these laws is a third rail. Largely because I think it obviously goes way beyond the question of immigration.
What we're really talking about is giving labor laws/labor-related white collar crime laws serious teeth. And I do believe that this is something that's going to be seen as a bridge too far for many people, left and right. The one thing that comes to mind, well there's two things. The first is Wage Theft, which some people say is a huge issue (and I say if it's not a huge issue it's a substantial one). And the second is Fraud/Misrepresentation. That brings me back to the Wells-Fargo scheme as the poster child for corporate malfeasance. I do think in this case investors should have been zero'd out and managers sent to prison. But people say...what about the pensions that have investments about them. And I mean, on one hand I can understand it, but on the other hand lots of people have to live off base governmental support alone. It sucks, but that's life.
But these things are the reason why I strongly believe you'll never see any sort of strong enforcement of these laws.
I'm just going to add in my take on this subject as a whole. This is what conflict between external players and internal players is going to increasingly look like in the future. I.E. people with skin in the game are going to demand that people who don't have skin in the game but take strong stances on things actually have skin in the game as well. They're going to show how the external players react when they become internal players. Now, I think there's a lot of room to criticize the details pretty much whenever this is done. That said, I don't think we shouldn't lose sight of this as well. There is a message here, I think. And note: I personally don't see this as an anti-left thing, I see this more as revealing differences between the up and the down, between the universalists and the hierarchists.
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Abbott and Desantis shipping migrants to liberal cities are explicitly pulling a stunt to request a specific policy change(asylum seekers required to wait in Mexico while their request is processing).
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I'm a moderate DeSantis fan who has since 2016 believed something along the line of "Trumpism deserves a better Trump". Trump, to me, seems like an incompetent narcissist who unintentionally ruptured America's bipartisan foreign policy consensus. He put ideas on the ballot that have a good deal of popular support, but because of campaign finance and the pecularities of the Democrat/Republican voting coalitions, never got any representation. Anti-interventionism, protectionism, immigration control, and nativism, to name a few.
Trump was able to do this with the power of the meme. CNN put him on TV over and over again because he was entertaining and ostensibly too much of a moron to be dangerous. But once Americans were exposed to this meme, it caused a preference cascade that took the establishment completely by surprise.
I think it's fine that DeSantis isn't solving the root of the problem. He is releasing a meme into the news cycle, which exposes (or manufactures?) the image of coastal elites who hang "No human is illegal" signs in their million dollar summer homes, but then call the national guard to deport fifty illegals who show up. Memes like this are incredibly powerful, and in my opinion, are the only way my side could possibly win.
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That's really interesting. I don't know very much about the economy at all, but I feel like my instinct is somewhat opposite. The fact that we exported all of the manufacturing to China drastically drove down prices, probably because Chinese people were willing to work for a lot less money. This has enabled an age of technological marvels that non-blue collar workers have been able to take advantage of and bring in tons of money.
I can see where you're coming from, however, that large swaths of the country are in despair. I wonder if there's a better solution, though, instead of trying to turn back time. As noted above, I feel like the exporting of manufacturing was probably a good thing and advanced technology. I would think that a good strategy could involve both of the following:
Major educational reach out to the middle of the country to get them interested at a young age in advancing and profitable scientific fields. This could take the form of either public sector (more public school funding for STEM classes or something) or even private sector funding (big tech companies getting involved in outreach both for publicity and to plant seeds which will become the next generation of great minds that come to work for them)
Greater focus on creating automation and tooling that blue collar workers could use. I'm not fully sure what this would be, but maybe there would be a way to take processes that are not fully automate-able but also can't be easily exported to China, due to language differences, geographic boundaries, location-specific need, or even cultural differences, and create tooling to allow American blue collar workers to do it.
I know the 2nd point is vague, but I feel like as technology progresses, we're not optimally progressing technology and optimally allocating the economy if we just insist that we need to make jobs for people. I feel that jobs should be created based on a need for product, services, and technology advancement, not just a need for someone to have a salary.
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Why are the immigrants here? Is it because people will hire them in each locality, or is it because they've been allowed into the country in the first place? If one believes it is the latter, why should one go after the people hiring them, rather than the people allowing them in? If you go after the employers, you're having to fight your own constituents, and no amount of enforcement will solve the basic problem of illegals flooding into the country, plus creating additional problems by impoverishing an underclass you still are stuck living with. Why should anyone do things this way?
Compare to illegal narcotics sales. Last I heard, it was commonly accepted that simply going after street-level dealers and buyers was more or less pointless; the whole strategy we've all settled on is to go after the supply, and the higher up the chain the better. Some level of enforcement against the street-level sellers and buyers is needed to keep a lid on things, but all actual progress occurs when you break up the distribution networks and the bosses who run them.
Why would different logic apply here?
I'd argue your example, shows why fixing the demand is actually the only real solution. If there is demand for narcotics, someone will provide it. If there is demand for illegal low paid labor, someone will find a way to provide that too.
Enforcement cannot solve either problem. You have to fundamentally change the demand (or accept the demand as not that bad and legalize it, but we'll take that off the table for now).
No matter how many suppliers you arrest, there will be more. That applies to suppliers of illegal drugs or illegal workers. I would argue that the only effective solution to fix the demand problem. Going after cartels has notably entirely failed to fix the issue. Smugglers will always find a way. The War on Drugs has cost billions upon billions and I could still buy pretty much anything I want on street corners. The War on Drugs is a failure, a War on Illegal Immigration would fail just as hard.
The demand is why there is an issue at all. That is the thing that must be removed. The problem for drugs is that this basically cannot be done. I think you could do it for immigration, but it would involve heavily clamping down on businesses, particularly farms et al.
The war on drugs is a failure because its being waged on a scale that's way too large using means that are completely ineffective. And that's only if we are assuming that the 'War on Drugs' existed as advertised.
A very simple contradictory example to the frame you're proposing is to look at 'legal' drug manufacturing processes and recognize how easily they can manufacture 'demand'. Case in point being the opioid epidemic. With that understood we can also recognize how easily the US government could end that entire manufacture and distribution process via nothing more than legislation and a few dozen FBI raids.
Opioid based pain killers don't need to exist on the scale they do. The demand wasn't for them specifically just like the demand for any drug isn't drug specific. People wanted pain relief and escapism. People wanted a good time. You can give most people all of that without completely destroying their lives. The path of least resistance towards peoples wants and needs isn't always the best. And I think it would behoove everyone to recognize that and aim to increase the resistance on some paths to prohibit as many people as possible from taking them. That goes for cheap drugs as well as cheap labour.
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Its an old fashioned prisoner's dilemma.
If all states enforce a ban on illegal migrant labor, labor costs and employment rates go up, which benefits the working class electorate.
If any states continue to allow illegal migrant labor, they get to produce agricultural products so cheaply that the farmers in the other states might as well close up shop.
The solution, as usual, is to have a mob boss in the form of the federal government intervene. But why do that when you can get all the benefits of appearing to be against illegal labor while secretly allowing the farm lobby to keep their illegal labor?
That's my theory anyway.
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Immigration helps Republicans, abortion Democrats. DeSantis increased the amount of time the news media focused on immigration.
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Alabama tried actually hammering down on illegals. It lead to their agricultural sector having such a grave labor shortage of seasonal workers that they tried to get prisoners to do the work. The prisoners were woefully unproductive compared to the illegal migrant workers.
A year later the state legislature very quietly stopped cracking down and the migrant workers came back. This was circa mid 2010s if I remember right.
Sounds like a mutually beneficial situation we’ve got going on
Sounds like an inadequate equilibrium to me. That is, mass immigration has been around long enough that all of the systems, procedures, habits, and prices of goods have adapted to their existence. So a sudden rapid change is likely to disrupt a bunch of stuff. On the other hand, if illegal immigrants had not been here to begin with, or were phased outslowly, then either farms would adapt to require less labor, or raise prices on fruit so they could pay higher wages, or more local people would move to those regions and gain experience and skill doing the job, or some combination of the above.
And, even if we did conclude that cheap immigrant labor was an appropriate solution, turning a blind eye to illegal immigrants is strictly inferior to increasing legal immigration and simultaneously lowering minimum wage, or giving out migrant work visas attached to a lower minimum wage. Because then you don't have people hiring cartels to smuggle them over the border and dying along the way, and you can pick and choose to let in honest productive people instead of workers and criminals alike and hoping you end up with more of the former than the latter. Illegal immigration specifically selects for people who don't respect the law. The only reason it's being used is because there isn't bipartisan agreement that cheap immigrant labor is good, so the people who want cheap labor use illegal immigrants to get their way and circumvent the legal system and minimum wage laws.
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I'd hope the legislature was electorally punished for that, but legislatures almost never are.
The trouble is that it doesn't really work like that. So go ahead, punish the legislature and fuck the farm lobby. After all, we're not farmers. Except now there's a labor shortage and farmers can't find anyone willing to pick fruit for 25 cents a bushel or whatever the going migrant rate is. Part of the labor market is not just that you have to pay someone to do something, but you also have to pay them not to do something else. So instead of competing against Guatamalan day labor you're competing against all the jobs that aren't exempt from minimum wage (and few places are even paying minimum wage anymore). So either you let half your harvest die in the fields or pay twice as much as you normally would to bring it in, and now food costs more and everyone's bitching. Considering that migrant workers are the backbone of everything that hasn't been mechanized, the question is how much more you're willing to pay for produce so that you don't have to worry about immigrants. And just because you might be willing to pay a little more doesn't mean that most people would agree with you, even other people who are nominally anti-immigration.
Yes, there will be an economic cost to more muscular anti-illegal operations. I'm willing to see the nation pay economic costs in order to thwart illegal invasions. The cost of not doing so is worse.
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"The federal government is either too incompetent, under-resourced, or ideologically-opposed to its own laws to enforce them! Mad about it? Clearly the solution is to impose a massive regulatory compliance burden on everyone else!!"
It is already illegal to employ illegal immigrants.
If you really cared about enforcing the law, why not at least enforce both?
What makes you think Florida isn't? It took me all of a couple seconds of googling to find recent press releases trumpeting partnerships between florida state law enforcement agencies and ICE. Do you think that ICE isn't doing workplace raids in Florida? Do you think that Florida cops aren't referring individuals without immigration status to ICE? On what basis?
Because illegal immigrants keep going there! A handful of actions doesn't mean the law is being thoroughly enforced.
Ah yes, clearly we don't care about murder either, because people keep getting killed!
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American nativism is sincere but unserious; they genuinely want to get rid of immigrants but for the most part they're unwilling to pay the fiscal or economic costs required to do so.
In that light, DeSantis' stunt makes perfect sense. For Joe Nativist, its a symbolic middle finger to immigrants and the liberals who support them without incurring any real cost.
On the contrary, being serious about it means addressing the actual cause of the problem, which is the border and the federal government's failure to enforce it, and not get diverted into futile, peacemeal enforcement against your own constituents while allowing those responsible to continue perpetuating the problem at zero personal cost.
Your analysis assumes that the base problem is actually illegal immigrants. Reds are coming around to the idea that it's not, and that the problem, fundamentally, is Blues. The problem isn't solvable because blues block and sabotage any attempted solution, because they derive significant advantages from its continuance. If that's an accurate assessment, any tactic that isn't aimed directly at blues is a waste of time.
"Do something about the blues" is even less serious than the notion that there's some cheap, easy solution if only the Democratic Party would stop getting in the way*. These sorts of stunts don't have a prayer of convincing anybody; their only utility is to grandstand to your audience about your willingness to be cruel to immigrants and give the middle finger to the Libs. More broadly, nativists have no real leverage to change anyone's mind.
The base problem is actually that the US is a great deal wealthier than Latin America and so there's enormous incentive to move from Latin America to the US. Restricting the supply of visas simply diverts demand to illicit avenues. So the question is not "do you support or oppose immigration", it is "what are you willing to do and how much are you willing to pay to reduce it?" For American liberals the answer is obviously "nothing". For conservatives the answer so far appears to be "very little". They're happy to pay for symbolic acts and entertain fantasies that Mexico is going to foot the bill, but even with both houses of Congress and a President who ran on an anti-immigration platform, they failed to manifest policy to come anywhere close to funding the necessary enforcement apparatus (what's more, they didn't even try very hard). And that's to say nothing of their lack of willingness to eat the economic costs of cracking down on illegal immigrants.
*I mean, there is a cheap, easy solution, but I doubt it will satisfy nativists.
These are assessments you are free to make and to argue for. Others, myself included, are free to disagree. In particular, if enforcement were actually hard, I would not expect blues to need to lie about it so often; see the "reins" incident, "kids in cages", and so on.
Politics of persuasion went out in 2014 at the very latest. American politics now center on deception and force. Nativists don't need to "change minds"; they need to find ways to enforce their preferences on others, and to deny others the opportunity to return the favor. That's what politics is now, for better or worse.
No. Blue tribe has shown itself willing to expend vast resources to increase illegal immigration, and to sabotage any efforts made to actually enforce the border. And sure, the Republican establishment is worse than useless 90% of the time, still meandering through various shallow grifts or in naïve appeals to a national unity that, if it ever existed, died the death without resurrection some time ago. We reds are working on that, learning to, in the local parlance, "coordinate meanness". "Stunts" like this one are a necessary and good part of that process.
In any case, if your general point is that Illegal Immigration is a fight the nativists are probably going to lose, I think on the main you're correct. There's already dozens of millions here, and their kids are into voting age. Perhaps we can get them on our side, perhaps not. Either way, the conflict with Blues, the culture war itself, is the real deal, and the answer to losing this fight is to escalate elsewhere. The individual battles are mainly useful in how they drive and shape that escalation, how and whether they cohere the tribe into a body willing to commit to the fight.
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This is not possible. Arizona tried a form of it during the Obama administration and lost in court.
So you're wrong, then sorta right, but ultimately wrong I think.
Arizona did mandate e-verify back in 2007. But in 2011, they won at the supreme court. (So you're wrong).
E-verify is mandatory in Arizona today. And its obviously not working as it should be. (So you're sorta right).
But I suspect that's just the legislature not working to actually enforce these laws because their constituents, the employers, dont want them. It's a matter of will, and if we don't have the will to stop ostensibly law abiding companies in the US from breaking the law, I can't see how we'll have the will to enforce thousands of miles of desolate border. There is nothing impossible about forcing companies to follow the law. If we accept that isnt doable, then society is already broken beyond repair.
Thanks for the contribution. I wasn't familiar with the arizona law!
I think under Arizona v. US (2012) any attempt to muscularly enforce such provisions would result in a DOJ lawsuit and injunction.
E-verify is different than a separate system because it is actually intended as a Federal-State-Business cooperative at the outset.
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I don't think this was a Florida play, as much as it was a national overture laying more groundwork for a potential presidential run.
The 50 migrants didn't last a day before they were removed from a rich people's playground. Immigrants for thee, etc.
Yep. As far as I’m concerned these people are welcome in Florida.
The point was made that the left just lies and don’t support the lower class. Kicked them out in a day. Couldn’t even find a few rich people with a pool house to put them in and get cheap labor.
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Arguably, the ones that are willing and able to work create the most benefit and the least burden, so there's nothing internally consistent about creating an environment where the willing and able are incentivized to stick around, and the unwilling or unable are encouraged to move elsewhere.
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Can we at least agree, though, that the practical implications of enforcing this law would impose substantial costs on the state?
Prosecuting hundreds or thousands of businesses and migrants and the judicial resources this would encompass alone could total in the 10s of millions of dollars, if not 100's. And since you're suggesting jail sentences to maximize efficacy, that's further resources expended in doling out such punishments.
And all the while the actual source of the waves of immigrants has not been stifled. Thus this proposed law has no guarantee of actually solving the issue in the long term. Just millions of dollars spent on enforcing these laws, year after year, indefinitely. Perhaps not an optimal use of resources.
I think the central argument by the Governors dealing with this situation is that the scope of the problem is far beyond the capacity of these states to address. South America has a population of 422 million people. Another 184 million in Central America. Thus, there could theoretically be 5 million immigrants crossing into the U.S. every year for 120 years, just counting current population, before it stops. I'm not sure how a handful of states are equipped to handle the potential influx vs. their population this would represent.
The Federal Government is supposedly charged with controlling the flow of immigrants into the nation, so by all rights the Federal Government is at fault for this current state of affairs.
Calling attention to this and forcing them to notice and address it is pretty much the only way this situation gets 'better.'
It also imposes a cost on the very people whose opposition is causing the problem and who also have the power to start fixing it.
Isn't that the point of most activism? Make your opponents uncomfortable enough to agree to address the concerns you are expressing?
In 2020 I sat and watched mass protest movements, civil disobedience, and other aggressive efforts to get cities to comply with the 'defund the police' mandate, as ill-defined as that was. I watched many cities, in response to the discomfort this caused, try to cooperate and compromise with this mandate.
This was hailed as important social change.
Ironically, Florida and Texas were both some of the least impacted by the Riots of 2020.
So I am really, REALLY not having any sympathy for those who are discomfited by a busload of migrants showing up in their community unannounced. If they actually agree that this is a problem to address, there's a clear path to trying to make the rate of illegal immigration decrease to 'manageable' levels.
Not entirely clear to me. You could mix substantial financial penalties into the mix to recoup the addition court costs and enforcement activities.
I also do not recall the expense associated with "the wall" being a significant concern for the anti-illegal immigration side.
Again, I do not recall the anti illegal immigration side being overly concerned with optimization of resources, so I find this supicious.
If you seriously disagree with the thesis "if you harshly penalize employers for employing illegal immigrants, they will stop coming and the ones here will leave" please just say so. That position seems untenable to me, and you seem to be enjoying it without having to actually associate yourself with it.
I dont have sympathy for them either.
But the other side's unworthiness isn't an explanation for why the anti illegal imigration crowd lets their politicians off the hook.
There is simply no way to make law-enforcement and courts revenue-neutral institution, since these penalties are only paid by those who are actually caught and convicted, and imprisoned.
If you can find me any instance where prosecution of particular crimes creates a revenue windfall for the state I'd love to see it.
Point being, Floridians may be willing to spend the money, but as a purely practical matter, choose not to unless it is likely to actually solve the problem.
Do you disagree with the assessment that building a big ol' wall would offer a lasting solution to the problem it is stated to solve?
Similar tactics have worked in other countries.
Do you see why imposing a solution that actually solves the stated problem might be strictly superior to one that only mitigates the problem for the time being?
That is, if you were offered the option to spend $5 million once to cure cancer, or spend $500,000 per year to treat cancer patients and reduce the death rate, which should you pick?
Explain how else the anti-illegal immigration can get their policies even considered by the side that pays almost no cost for illegal immigration and thus has no incentive to resolve it?
I believe it will mitigate illegal immigration and employment of illegal immigrants to approximately the same extent it mitigates the distribution and consumption of illegal drugs.
Florida arrests approximately 120,000 people per year for drug offenses.
And clearly, drugs still come into Florida, people still use them, and continue to get arrested for them, year after year after year.
Explain why your proposed solution will not be subject to the same outcome. Illegal immigrants continue to come into Florida, people continue to hire them, so the result is just thousands of arrests per year, every year, forever.
You seem to be assuming 1) the wall will not have ongoing costs but will be perfectly effective, and 2) the expense of actually enforcing the law will not decrease after some employers are destroyed and some companies are bankrupted. Those don't like reasonable assumptions to me.
I think legal business owners, small and otherwise, are generally more rational that drug dealers. If the punishment vs payoff curve is correctly designed, they will respond more like rational actors. Do you disagree?
They will not come if they can't find work.
Sure.
I also think it is functionally impossible to "correctly design" a payoff curve.
This is something that is beyond the capabilities of modern political science, despite what experts and pundits may believe. Too many variables, and there is substantial incentive to cheat or otherwise thwart the law.
Politically speaking, the incentive to insert carveouts, exceptions, and other incentives is also massive.
The nice thing about a big, dumb wall is that the engineering aspect is well understood. You just build it.
All I'm saying is that as a proposed solution I think the wall is much more likely to achieve the stated goals, at a lower cost (including ongoing cost) and isn't dependent as much on the 'rational' behavior of employers and immigrants.
Hence, why this solution has been used by many countries to much success.
You can certainly convince me that the tradeoffs or second order effects aren't worth it!
I mean, if you're already arguing that employers will be destroyed and companies bankrupted, you're saying that a substantial economic cost is a good thing?
So are we agreeing that another benefit of a wall is that it doesn't require destroying employers and bankrupting companies to build it?
They will not come if a fifty-foot-tall barrier physically obstructs their route.
Unless the barrier proves trivial to breach or surmount. Or they enter on a legitimate visa and never leave.
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And then our agricultural system falls apart, wohoo
I believe the solution to that was to add a big beautiful door to allow the ones you need to come through.
The big, beautiful door was to be for legal immigrants, who will have been vetted and are not cartel members, who will swear allegiance to the USA. Sounds exactly like “the ones we need”.
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It's a national issue - I don't just want them out of my state, I want them out of country. I want them to never try coming back. This requires changing the prevailing national political winds, not just state-level policy that shifts which states illegal aliens prefer to live in. If I lived in Florida, sure, I'd also want a hardline approach that's effective in the short-run, but I would still be in favor of this sort of political gamesmanship.
So does it being a national issue excuse Desantis or Abbot from not taking a hard line against employers within the boundaries they control?
This looks to me like a 2002 Democratic governor pulling some stunt regarding gay marriage while their own state hasnt legalized gay marriage. My reaction would be "screw that! Do what you can in your state and then pull some stunts!"
I dont underatand why people againstt illegal immigration are giving governors a pass when they pull stunts rather than do what they can.
No, it doesn't.
Yeah, that actually worked. No one succeeded in taking that action at the state level, they pulled it off with federal legal shenanigans. I don't think this example works in the direction you're kind of implying.
I don't think I'm granting such a pass. I think Desantis and other governors should attack the issue from multiple angles and do so as aggressively as politically feasible. I don't think there's 4D chess going on here or anything, I think Desantis just likes flashy, politically combative maneuvers. Sure, I'd like him to do more on it locally, but I'm still going to be happy to see a culture warrior on my side of the issue.
Making marriage legal in a state is not equivalent to flying immigrants to MV.
It's equivalent to cracking down on employers in a state. Which no republican governor is willing to do.
Cracking down on employers would be an immoral action, anyway. That sort of thing shouldn't happen; the problem isn't "the illegals have a job", the problem is "the illegals exist". Frankly, employing them is likely helping them keep their ongoing criminality to a minimum.
The only people who should be punished for illegals are the illegals themselves and their advocates.
It is illegal to employ illegal immigrants.
You're excusing one crime and demanding enforcement of another.
Yes, the problem with illegals isn't that they're illegal. If the Democrats could wave their hands and through genie magic render all illegals perfectly legal valid citizens, I'd still want them gone -- in fact, I'd want them gone even moreso.
I am not making arguments based on legality. I'm making moral arguments. When law and morality conflict, the law is in error.
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Putting aside your take on the morality of the parties, which I think is ass backwards, the benefit of cracking down on employers is that it's a politically viable potential solution. If there are no employers for economic migrants, there will be no economic migrants.
The average American voter is not going to support shooting illegal border crossers. Nor are they going to support imprisoning families with their little kids at the border. And if you bus them back home, they'll be back within the fortnight. On the other hand, if prospective migrants know there's no opportunities in the USA, they won't come.
It's like how the HOA will tell you to secure your trash. They could just hire hunters to go after bears, skunks, and raccoons without imposing on you. But that solution is more expensive and makes people squeamish. By demanding an expensive and/or unpopular solution you're only guaranteeing a solution won't be implemented.
I agree the average American will not support shooting border crossers. I disagree the right cannot find electoral victory with non-shooting harsh enforcement, though, so your claimed benefit doesn't sway me. I fully believe the populist anti-immigrant right is capable of winning elections.
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If no-one employs them, the incentive to come is much reduced. I think you have this entirely backwards. They only come because they can get work and have a better standard of living here. Fixing that is the only long term solution. Smugglers will always find a way, whether it is people or drugs as long as the demand exists.
Enforcement can certainly make it more difficult and reduce numbers. But if you really want none, then you have to stop the demand. Hiring an illegal worker is what attracts said illegal workers.
And no cheap, exploitable under-the-table labor, either. A slave caste is useful, I just don't want it entrenched and influencing society. I'm fundamentally okay with the idea of Hispanic Helots -- I'm just not okay with it in the current world because we have this ridiculous notion of birthright citizenship and endless welfare parasitism.
I would, for instance, agree to support open borders if it came with muscular guarantees that these populations would not ever have voting rights or access to the public's welfare bucks, and would be forcibly kept in appropriate enclaves so as not to spoil the areas the rest of us live in.
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Hold on just a second. Why are employers who break the law by hiring an illegal immigrant not immoral in the first place? Why do they get a pass when they refuse to do their part and verify that their employees are authorized to work?
I will not punish Americans for exploiting non-Americans. They are outsiders and lack any moral significance. Their employment, or lack thereof, isn't worrisome; the problem isn't the illegals having jobs, the problem is there being illegals. It's not the business' duty to enforce national sovereignty and borders, it's the business' duty to do the best they can for their customers and communities -- even if that involves breaking the backs of illegals. Wring them for all their worth while the feds sort them out.
You don't need to care about the non-citizens to worry about this, just about the effect on the citizens. It's like saying that you can't object to someone stealing from the cash register because cash isn't people and lacks any moral significance.
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Bullshit. The people who aren't US citizens have some inherent moral worth, even if it isn't as high as a citizen's.
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The pragmatic problem with that, is that it gives the businesses an incentive to vote for and lobby politicians who will not then crack down on illegal immigrants.
If Farmers (an important lobby in rural Red heartlands) have an incentive to keep them, then Red politicians have the incentive to keep them. If you allow farmers to employ them, then the fed's will never sort them out. The Blues won't and neither will the Reds no matter who is in charge.
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You mean like how lawfare got national gay marriage invented by the Supreme Court while 31 states, including California, Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Tennessee, Colorado, Washington, and Hawaii had state constitutional prohibitions on it?
Lawfare implies a degree of efficacy that takes it out of the realm of "stunt", so no.
If Desantis was engaging in effective lawsuits rather than shipping illegals to MV for the lols, my question wouldn't make any sense.
He's doing stunts while ignoring highly effective laws he can pass in his state.
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DeSantis absolutely should get e-Verify going.
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It's not even DeSantis's problem. One thing that's often left out is that the Martha's Vineyard immigrants originated in Texas, not Florida. Florida evidently doesn't have enough of a migrant problem to make it worthwhile to find 50 illegals in Miami for his publicity stunt. If DeSantis, Ducey, and Abbot were actually trying to solve the problem and make some political hay out of the alleged indifference of northern states, they would have said "Hey, our resources for dealing with migrants are stretched to the breaking point and we're on the brink of a crisis. Would it be possible for you to accept some of them so that you can provide assistance?" If New York et al. had said no then the GOP governors would have a point. Now the Democrats can simply say that their anger isn't about the migrants themselves but about the lack of preparation they were given and the cavalier way these people are being treated. Taking families in dire situations and busing them to places that you know aren't prepared for their arrival (and going to the lengths of avoiding busy areas to drop them off on middle-of-nowhere residential streets because they're close to the houses of politicians you don't like) suggests that you're more interested in "owning the libs" than in the people actually involved.
Wait you don’t get to say that these states didn’t asks nicely. They’ve been yelling since Biden was elected to solve the issue. They already did exactly what you said they should do and asks nicely. Now their sending them out of state to escalate. Seems fair. And now they should send millions.
The trouble with this strategy is that it could backfire. For all the press this is getting, I have yet to see it brought up as a campaign issue, at least in Pennsylvania. Dr. Oz doesn't have anything on his website about it except generic Republican "secure the border" stuff. Mastriano has something about how Pennsylvania will stop receiving chartered buses with illegal immigrants, but it's unclear how this would be enforced. I haven't seen any campaign ads specifically about immigration at all, though it's possible I could be missing them. I doubt anyone would send any migrants to PA anyway, at least before the election, because the repercussions are too unpredictable. Same reason why Biden won't do anything until after the election.
But if this continues after the election, Biden has a pretty easy way out of this without making any real concession. He simply tells Abbot and the others that they've made their point and he agrees that Texas, etc. shouldn't bear this burden alone. Then DHS announces a policy of busing illegals throughout the country so that cities will receive them in proportion to their populations. This is a pyrrhic victory for Abbot and Ducey, who now have to explain to fellow GOP governors how they provoked the Biden administration into busing illegals into places like Cleveland, St. Louis, and Oklahoma City. It's especially bad for a hanger-on like DeSantis—who never really had his own crisis to worry about—who now has to deal with the prospect of migrants being bused into places like Jacksonville and Tampa.
And then there's Venezuela. I can't find good numbers, but reports suggest that a large proportion of the migrants are Venezuelan. Due to the frosty state of US–Venezuela relations, Venezuela hasn't been cooperative with returning migrants. Biden could call up the governors in question and ask them for support in negotiating a deal, making it clear that such a deal would probably require eliminating some of the sanctions. If they don't cooperate, it makes them look like what they are calling a crisis is trumped by a peripheral issue like Venezuela sanctions. If they provide support but they have to buck the GOP to do it then they're in a precarious political position. If the whole GOP gets on board then it's a clear win for Biden.
The problem with these kinds of political stunts is that they seem meant to appeal to the kind of person who wouldn't consider voting for the other party anyway. You can argue with me about how effective they would be but unless you're seriously considering voting Democrat Biden could give a shit about how it appears to you politically. Romney got raked over the coals for saying it but he was right when he said that a certain percentage of the country wouldn't vote for him no matter what and another percentage would vote for him no matter what so his goal was to appeal to those who might vote for him but might not. Some may argue that you need to turn out the base, but research suggests that this also motivates the opposing base to vote against you, so it's ultimately a wash. There's an argument to be made that when you're facing a real crisis and those in charge won't listen then you have to break out the nuclear option. The trouble is that this has to be don very carefully. The other side aren't babes in the woods and they have options as well.
The feds bussing illegals in doesn't stop you from bussing them right back out, so it's just everyone wasting money. If Biden wants to campaign on flagrant misspending done strictly to help people break the law, I encourage him -- I believe this would be a wonderful policy and I have nothing but approval for him doing it. Ideally very loudly.
Actually, it does. Texas has been keen to emphasize that the relocations are entirely voluntary. Forcible relocation would be a pretty big escalation that could expose state and local governments to legal consequences given that they're essentially kidnapping people.
Just as Texas and Arizona are already doing.
If Biden wants to campaign on abetting illegal immigration and using federal resources to traffic them around the country instead of out of it, again, I cannot possibly state how firmly I support this chain of events. I agree with you completely, it should all happen ASAP.
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I'm confused why you think the real complaint is the resources required to house the unwelcomed migrants. They don't want to house them, they want them to not show up in the first place. States can't prevent this unilaterally.
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NY et al can step up now. Have they?
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Any given migrant is fungible. Taking fifty from Florida will make absolutely no difference; taking fifty from anywhere will make no difference. The end goal is to affect sweeping social and political change. The individuals are irrelevant because the problem is the mass and the ideology behind it.
But why do the supporters of that goal accept "their" politicians only persuing it at a national level rather that both a national and a state level?
"What you did wasn't perfect so it's bad" is the domain of crazy ideologues. Could DeSantis' move have been even better? Yes! Does that have any bearing on the goodness of what he did do? No.
I think the point is rather that he doesn’t want to actually address the issue in his state because that has politically unpopular consequences
I don't believe DeSantis would face meaningful political cost for taking firm anti-illegal stances. I doubt the Cubans have a lot of sympathy for South American border hoppers.
I actually meant things like: agriculture business is dependent upon their labor
There will be costs, yes. But so long as you can eke out an electoral victory costs are acceptable.
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Individualist societies don't tend to like the idea of people being treated as fungible.
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