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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.
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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