4,000 terrorists crossing the border

[_honorentheos]

I’ll never understand the GOP hating Mexicans. If they actually understood who they are as a people they could get them as a voting block. Humongous conservative Catholic base.

Idiots.

- Doc

Exactly. When they took the time to actually think about it after Romney's loss in 2012, they came to the same conclusion. But it turned out too many of the rank-and-file just can't stomach the idea, so populism and Trump I guess.

[_Chap]

If the GOP actually cracked down on undocumented immigrants the economy would collapse. I think, and I haven't googled this, but something like 70% of farm laborers are undocumented immigrants.

Well, I was so astonished by this figure that I googled at once, and found this:

These U.S. industries can't work without illegal immigrants

If that's the way things are, Trump's attempts to suggest that the US should get rid of its undocumented workers and let no more in is more or less a death sentence for much of US agriculture.

Now Trump is probably too dumb to understand that. But the Republican politicians who support him (mostly) don't have that excuse.

Hey Ajax - do you still want to see them all thrown out, so the fruit rots and the farmers go bankrupt?

This is the key extract - and it has live links to sources for its facts:

Since agriculture is the industry that's most reliant on undocumented workers – and it's my area of expertise and research – let's zoom in on it.

Overall, the agricultural industry in the United States has been on the decline since 1950. Back then, farming was a family business that employed more than 10 million workers, 77 percent of whom were classified as "family." As of 2000 – the latest such data available – only 3 million work on farms, and as noted earlier, an estimated half are undocumented.

Increasingly, dairy farms such as those in New York rely on workers from Mexico and Guatemala, many of whom are believed to be undocumented. Currently, there is no visa program for year-round workers on dairy farms, so the precarious status of these workers poses serious concerns for the economic viability of the dairy industry.

In recent research conducted by the Cornell Farmworker Program, 30 New York dairy farmers told us they turned to undocumented workers because they were unable to find and keep reliable U.S. citizens to do the jobs. That's in part because farm work can be physically demanding, dirty and socially denigrated work. More importantly, it is one the most dangerous occupations in the U.S.

A study commissioned by the dairy industry suggested that if federal labor and immigration policies reduced the number of foreign-born workers by 50 percent, more than 3,500 dairy farms would close, leading to a big drop in milk production and a spike in prices of about 30 percent. Total elimination of immigrant labor would increase milk prices by 90 percent.

The U.S. fruit, vegetable and meat industries are similarly at risk, and without the help of unauthorized workers, production would drop and consumers would likely see higher prices.
This has become of particular concern as immigration enforcement in agricultural communities intensifies.

Although the focus is usually on the southern border, what happens in the north matters as well, in part because the Border Patrol's 100-mile jurisdiction means immigrants living in most of New England can be pursued anywhere. As such, the surge in immigration enforcement along the border with Canada in recent years has resulted in more farmworkers being deported.

It also has meant fresh produce has been gone unpicked, left to rot in fields. One New York apple grower told us that due to labor shortages and dwindling prices for his red delicious variety, he plans to let his 100-year-old orchard go, because any investments in production would result in significant economic loss.

Who cares? Most Americans

Judging by the pronouncements from the White House, you might think most people don't realize how integral undocumented immigrants are to the U.S. economy. But in fact, polls suggest that Americans do understand this, and also don't believe that immigrants take their jobs.

In a soon-to-be-published poll Cornell conducted in 2017, we asked New Yorkers, "How do you believe undocumented farmworkers impact local communities?"

About 75 percent of those we polled said they have "generally positive impacts," up from 62 percent in 2008. Of those who had a positive impression, most said it was because migrants fill jobs unwanted by citizens or provide essential farm help and keep prices low.

And national polling backs this up. A 2016 Pew poll found that 76 percent believe undocumented immigrants are as honest and hard-working as U.S. citizens, while 71 percent said they mostly fill jobs that Americans aren't willing to do.

In other words, not only are there lots of reasons to care, the vast majority of Americans actually do.

[_EAllusion]

Republican leadership spent the entire early 2000's scheming to attract Mexican-American voters. That's the entire lynch-pin of Karl Rove's "permanent Republican majority" plan. The reason they thought they could do this is that Mexican-American voters have low political engagement and therefore are a persuadable demographic and because pervasive cultural conservatism among Mexican-Americans can be appealed better to by the GOP's brand.

This didn't work out because too many rank-and-file GOP voters, especially those that vote in primaries, are quite xenophobic. That's because the GOP spent the preceding several decades appealing to people upset about the civil rights movement. In a surprise twist, that group has high propensity to be hostile to, resentful, or fearful of people racially different from them.

[_honorentheos]

Now that I'm typing this out, I'm actually having to re-think my whole 'everyone gets a tax ID number' so they can pay into the system. I think the system is designed to function the way it does so we can enjoy cheap food. I don't know. I don't know what the ethical solution is for everyone. Our system works, but it seems to be unethical on a lot of fronts.

I appreciated the thought that went into the overall post, but particularly wanted to bring this forward. While I would argue the system isn't so much designed as it finds an equilibrium between prices and demand for the most part, and we tinker with both sides through things others might call "socialism" but can't in the US because that's what the bad guys do, it's worth asking what exactly is an ethical economic system?

One could try to approach this ethics-forward, or economics-forward.

Starting economics-forward, Libertarian thinking is that the best approach is to not tinker and let the outcomes of individual choices be what they will be. Any attempt to counter weight the system would result in some form of favoritism which essentially means someone is being potentially treated unfairly which starts to put ethics into the question. The economic argument is that tinker is also less efficient than the market would be on its own. When it comes to the price of labor, the argument economically is that as long as someone is willing to sell their labor for a certain price, it's not up to someone else to say that they are necessarily being treated unethically without defining what ethics means in this context beyond fairness.

While I personally think the principals of this are sound, in practical terms a person's starting position in life creates advantages of such significance that left unchecked this approach results in an aristocracy where those who have continue to accumulate wealth and pass it on to their offspring, and those who lose the lottery of birth simply won't get the shots needed to be able to rise to their real potential. What made the American experiment so profound in the 18th Century was that, while imperfect, it broke down the inheritance model of the European aristocracies into a model that, to some degree, gave more people a shot at seeing their willingness to work, skill or expertise in a field, or innovation and risk taking potentially rewarded. This wasn't the privilege of the few elites who weren't indentured to someone else's land or kept out of the educated ranks. The irony of the modern conservative movement with it's lip service to liberty and supporting prosperity is, in my opinion, that it is done in the service of an American return to an economic aristocratic model.

The more progressive view seems to favor much more tinkering to manipulate the system to achieve a goal, which we certainly do regardless of party in the US. The trade war and the farms bill measures intended to offset the problems the trade war causes, etc., etc., are examples of "swallowing a spider to catch a fly" we swallowed previously that traditional conservatives argue is the inevitable path to self-destruction such tinkering takes us down. Folks like Bach claiming to be pro-business but also Trump supporters are hypocrites of the worst order just based on his economic behavior.

in my opinion, ethics and economics are oil and water. They don't mix well, and when one tries hard to make economics ethical, or an ethical system behave on principals of economics the results aren't going to blend perfectly no matter how much stirring one does. When it comes to immigration, the history of the US has been one of people taking the risk to come here and sell their labor at personal cost so their children can live a better life. If I have to stake an ethical position out in the economic argument, it's that we should ensure that is possible.

[_Chap]

Pence is beginning to find it hard to support Trump\s lies about the wall ..

Mike Pence struggles to defend Trump's claims on border wall

You may have heard Donald Trump claim that previous presidents told him they should have built a wall along the US-Mexico border.

(The original article, q.v., has a video of Trump making the claim)

Well, you may not believe it, but it turns out literally none of Trump’s living predecessors made any such statement. The offices of former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all publicly denied that a conversation about the merits of a border wall took place.

Vice president Mike Pence, ever the faithful employee of his boss, struggled to explain the basis of Trump’s claim in an interview with NBC’s Today show on Tuesday.

“I know the president has said that was his impression from previous presidents,” Pence said.

“I know I’ve seen clips of previous presidents talking about the importance of border security and talking about the issue of illegal immigration.”

When pressed by NBC’s Hallie Jackson on how that obviously differs from Trump’s predecessors telling him they regretted not building a border wall, Pence again deflected: “Look, honestly the American people want us to address this issue.”

It’s too bad there’s no ‘Phone-a-Friend’ option in live interviews.

[_honorentheos]

Pence is beginning to find it hard to support Trump\s lies about the wall ..

Mike Pence struggles to defend Trump's claims on border wall

You may have heard Donald Trump claim that previous presidents told him they should have built a wall along the US-Mexico border.

(The original article, q.v., has a video of Trump making the claim)

Well, you may not believe it, but it turns out literally none of Trump’s living predecessors made any such statement. The offices of former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all publicly denied that a conversation about the merits of a border wall took place.

Vice president Mike Pence, ever the faithful employee of his boss, struggled to explain the basis of Trump’s claim in an interview with NBC’s Today show on Tuesday.

“I know the president has said that was his impression from previous presidents,” Pence said.

“I know I’ve seen clips of previous presidents talking about the importance of border security and talking about the issue of illegal immigration.”

When pressed by NBC’s Hallie Jackson on how that obviously differs from Trump’s predecessors telling him they regretted not building a border wall, Pence again deflected: “Look, honestly the American people want us to address this issue.”

It’s too bad there’s no ‘Phone-a-Friend’ option in live interviews.

There's an article on CNN criticizing Ocasio-Cortez for her comments implying people should overlook inexactness in her citing of facts when she is right about the broader, supposedly moral argument. The article rightly points out this is the argument Trump makes and uses to undermine facts as meaningful. What Pence is doing above is another example of this. The underlying premise is that we ought to assume the moral superiority of a particular position as prime, so any mistakes or misrepresentation of fact is insignificant. I would argue this idea is the most corrosive and yet prolific idea that feeds the base on both sides of the political spectrum in the US. One has to accept that there are good ideas on both sides, and the best option to address a problem isn't necessarily a purely ideological one to be able to view the case-by-case facts as necessary to decision making.

[_Maksutov]

The underlying premise is that we ought to assume the moral superiority of a particular position as prime, so any mistakes or misrepresentation of fact is insignificant. I would argue this idea is the most corrosive and yet prolific idea that feeds the base on both sides of the political spectrum in the US. One has to accept that there are good ideas on both sides, and the best option to address a problem isn't necessarily a purely ideological one to be able to view the case-by-case facts as necessary to decision making.

+1,000

[_Xenophon]

The underlying premise is that we ought to assume the moral superiority of a particular position as prime, so any mistakes or misrepresentation of fact is insignificant. I would argue this idea is the most corrosive and yet prolific idea that feeds the base on both sides of the political spectrum in the US. One has to accept that there are good ideas on both sides, and the best option to address a problem isn't necessarily a purely ideological one to be able to view the case-by-case facts as necessary to decision making.

+1,000

Seconded, Mak. I also think honor really gets at the crux of how we do that in his previous post which was another golden one but I'll only quote the most relevant.

in my opinion, ethics and economics are oil and water. They don't mix well, and when one tries hard to make economics ethical, or an ethical system behave on principals of economics the results aren't going to blend perfectly no matter how much stirring one does. When it comes to immigration, the history of the US has been one of people taking the risk to come here and sell their labor at personal cost so their children can live a better life. If I have to stake an ethical position out in the economic argument, it's that we should ensure that is possible.

If we can truly focus on the ethics (the why if you will) of our position I think we come closer to finding those solutions (the how) no matter what "side" they come from.

[_canpakes]

100% true. I think EA made this point on a different thread if I recall correctly, but it bears repeating. If the GOP actually cracked down on undocumented immigrants the economy would collapse. I think, and I haven't googled this, but something like 70% of farm laborers are undocumented immigrants.

If we lost 70% of farm laborers over the course of 1-2 years the country wouldn't come to a grinding halt. It would be a catastrophic event. We don't have enough menial laborers, or rather we have people but they won't do those jobs, to fill that void. And to go to EA's point I believe he made, economic studies have found that for every farm labor job another 1.5 jobs above it are created through factory and processing work, truck drivers, and supermarket employees.

What do we have? Something like 6-8 million farm laborers? If we immediately unemployed them an an additional 11'ish million permanent residents would go without jobs. Believe you me they wouldn't simply hop into crop picking. The pay cut would be unbearable, and then you have things like, say, the grocery worker at your local Walmart is A) too far away from the field, B) not physically fit enough for the work, and C) not skilled enough to tell what is ripe and when. Being a farmhand is actually a skill position. The same is true for packaging plant workers and truck drivers, too. There's a world of difference between canning tomatoes in a plant and picking them in a field. They require hard, hard labor and skill.

On top of that, rural America would cease to exist. Farmers can't harvest their own crops. Those crops would rot in the field. Cows would remain un-milked, and when that happens, if you aren't aware, they stop producing. A field can be replanted, but there aren't enough dairy cows around to replace the entire stock that a dairy farm would lose. Those people would literally never recover. Chicken farms are another one that comes to mind. Fast food restaurants are another. That's just off the top of my head. I can't imagine the catastrophe we'd experience if we shut down the flow of cheap labor.

Now that I'm typing this out, I'm actually having to re-think my whole 'everyone gets a tax ID number' so they can pay into the system. I think the system is designed to function the way it does so we can enjoy cheap food. I don't know. I don't know what the ethical solution is for everyone. Our system works, but it seems to be unethical on a lot of fronts.

The Wall is just a way to galvanize the GOP base through xenophobia. I believe the GOP actually understands that it'll be ineffective to the degree its base wants it to be. It's an impossibility, really.

- Doc

You... you, and your ‘facts’ and things. Stop ruining it for the #MAGA crowd.

#4000terrorists..!

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Seconded, Mak. I also think honor really gets at the crux of how we do that in his previous post which was another golden one but I'll only quote the most relevant.

in my opinion, ethics and economics are oil and water. They don't mix well, and when one tries hard to make economics ethical, or an ethical system behave on principals of economics the results aren't going to blend perfectly no matter how much stirring one does. When it comes to immigration, the history of the US has been one of people taking the risk to come here and sell their labor at personal cost so their children can live a better life. If I have to stake an ethical position out in the economic argument, it's that we should ensure that is possible.

If we can truly focus on the ethics (the why if you will) of our position I think we come closer to finding those solutions (the how) no matter what "side" they come from.

Perhaps the cost of citizenship is the sacrifice of one's own life to ensure the betterment of your progeny's; and perhaps the pathway to citizenship is paid through hard labor thus benefiting the man and woman who are willing to sacrifice in order to give us cheap food and concurrently a better life for their own family.

Ugh. That sounds gross, but I can't really see how to work this out any other way.

- Doc