[djrogers]

This is one of the enormous penalties we as a nation have to pay because neither of our political parties actually wants to solve the illegal immigration issue.

Republicans get to use ‘illegal immigrants taking jobs’ as a stick to beat democrats with, and progressives use cries of racism to rally support amongst Latino voters.

Meanwhile anyone who espouses common sense ideas such as reforming our immigration policy gets called a racist and ‘anti-immigrant’.

[toast0]

I think it's clear that the immigration system could use reform. It's not at all clear what the reform should be. The quoted 150-year wait doesn't quite exist, but real waits of 10-20 years are common for immigrants with lower priority from countries with large numbers of applicants (which are often simply countries with large numbers of people).

That people still want to come here despite having to put up with that is a testament to how powerful the draw to living here is. I can't blame someone for illegally immigrating when they see that the legal path will take so long, and that they could be building a better life in the meantime, despite the struggles that come from living here without papers.

[fzeroracer]

Can you explain what you mean by 'reforming our immigration policy', because there is a wide range of options when it comes to said reform ranging from sensible to separating children from their family and putting them in camps.

[HarryHirsch]

And the Latino Caucus insists on family-based immigration. This is a trans-party issue, consequently any kind of point system will never get off the ground.

[xellisx]

'Taking our jobs' is an outright lie, since the opertunity to use undocumented workers as a way to spend a lot less on a given task/job and have to hide that fact, so they also have skip out on taxes for said work. My opinion is that the people claiming this use this statement to missdirect the core issues becuase they are the one giving jobs to non citizens becuase they are greedy.

[DoofusOfDeath]

Could you explain the connection you see between illegal-immigration policies and legal-immigration policies?

[addicted]

Umm reforming the immigration policy is exactly what progressives are calling for. The only difference is that the conservatives want to somehow deport everyone who is here and has been here for decades to somewhere while the “progressives” recognize that they are an integral part of the economy and want them to pay a penalty, and stand in the back of the line for American citizenship while they are provided recognized status so they can live in the country legally in the meanwhile.

This isn’t both sides not wanting to do anything. This is both sides having very different solutions.

All of which is irrelevant to the article since this is discussing legal immigration.

[ta76567656]

Conservatives (the politicians) pretend to want to deport illegal immigrants to get votes. They don't actually want to do it because a lot of businesses depend on them for cheap labor. You don't even need to deport anyone, just start actually enforcing laws that require employers to check employee eligibility. Fewer jobs for illegal immigrants would mean less incentive for them to come. That nobody has tried this shows IMO that nobody (in power) actually wants it. They just want a few examples to grandstand about for votes.

pay a penalty, and stand in the back of the line for American citizenship while they are provided recognized status so they can live in the country legally in the meanwhile.

This is basically amnesty/open-borders. Not arguing for or against, but it is. There is no "line" for citizenship, after five years of permanent residency anyone qualifies. The "line" is for the permanent residency (green card), and you have to qualify to even get in the line, that's why people come illegally. So what's the new qualification? "already in the country"? Then what about the people here 20 years from now? Is it a rolling admission? If not then you have the same problem as before. If yes, then the policy is 'open borders' possibly with a qualification of "can avoid getting caught for X years".

If you don't find open borders acceptable the only reasonable compromise I can think of is a capped category that anyone can apply for, where the cap is adjusted as needed. Somewhat ike the current Diversity Visa (Green Card lottery) which is capped at around 50K per year, though that cap rarely changes.

[UncleEntity]

> That nobody has tried this shows IMO that nobody (in power) actually wants it.

Sheriff Joe tried this and ended up with a federal indictment, a pardon from Trump and (apparently) is now running for congress.

[pessimizer]

> reforming the immigration policy is exactly what progressives are calling for.

It might be what progressives are calling for, but it's not what Democrats are calling for when they are in power. Additionally, I'm not sure how progressive it is to prefer elite immigrants with "advanced degrees" over other immigrants.

[berthe]

> This is one of the enormous penalties we as a nation have to pay because neither of our political parties actually wants to solve the illegal immigration issue.

This is a legal immigration issue. There are no illegal immigrants on H1Bs waiting for a green card.

This could definitely be fixed or reformed without touching the illegal immigration issue.

[nomocrypto]

> Meanwhile anyone who espouses common sense ideas such as reforming our immigration policy gets called a racist and ‘anti-immigrant’.

Federal policy is hardly ever “common sense”. Have those people actually tried not saying racist things? Because I swear, 99.999% of the “common sense” reforms I hear about I nvolve deporting basically everyone who isn’t super white..

[scarejunba]

[flagged]

[merpnderp]

Weird and here I thought a path to citizenship had broad Republican support, they just want it tied to stronger checks on who enters.

But keep winning votes and changing minds by calling your opposition racists and bigots. That will win your votes.

[fzeroracer]

How do you feel about separating families at the border? Because as part of the Republican's push for 'stronger checks', it does nothing to solve the current absolutely abhorrent treatment of people seeking asylum in the US.

I'll consider not calling them racists and bigots when their policies stop being the policies of racists and bigots.

[scarejunba]

"stronger checks" is an escape valve to stick practically anything in there. Give me a break haha.

[mygo]

> anyone who espouses common sense ideas such as reforming our immigration policy gets called a racist and ‘anti-immigrant’.

bold statement. source?

[mygo]

2 downvotes yet not a single source. Hasty generalizations such as “any time someone does x, y happens” aren’t enough to convince everyone, but they do make for a strong emotional response for some. Such as knee-jerk anonymous downvotes when anyone asks for any piece of real data to back up the claim, without giving explanations why.

[ajross]

> Meanwhile anyone who espouses common sense ideas such as reforming our immigration policy gets called a racist and ‘anti-immigrant’.

First: total strawman.

Second: not even relevant to the issue at hand. There is, to first approximation, exactly zero undocumented immigration among "Indian immigrants with advanced degrees" so I'm having a very, very hard time imaging how this is an "enormous penalty" we have to pay for failing to solve the "illegal immigration issue".

So... enlighten us. What's your common sense idea that would address the problem here? I'll only call you a racist if it's a racist idea, I promise.

[coldtea]

You kind of already made the parent's point for them. You didn't call it out explicitly, but you're already implying they are racist.

>Second: not even relevant to the issue at hand. There is, to first approximation, exactly zero undocumented immigration among "Indian immigrants with advanced degrees" so I'm having a very, very hard time imaging how this is an "enormous penalty" we have to pay for failing to solve the "illegal immigration issue".

The "issue at hand" the parent discussed is immigration in general. Not "Indian immigrants with advanced degrees" immigration only, even if TFA is about that. Posts on HN are taken with liberty as starting points of a discussion, and the parent never mentioned that they constrain their observation to only concern "Indian immigrants with advanced degrees", so your response is disingenuous.

[ajross]

> The "issue at hand" the parent discussed is immigration in general

No. djrogers above literally said that "This is one of the enormous penalties we as a nation have to pay because neither of our political parties actually wants to solve the illegal immigration issue." So unless you want to play games with finding an alternative antecedent for "this", you are going to have to retract that.

What the grandparent poster was doing, and you, is trying to inject a fundamentally unsound and offensive position into the debate by not saying it and instead creating a giant strawman around the issue to preemptively accuse the rest of us of intolerance.

So out with it: what's your common sense fix to this that we're refusing to discuss?

[coldtea]

>No. djrogers above literally said that "This is one of the enormous penalties we as a nation have to pay because neither of our political parties actually wants to solve the illegal immigration issue." So unless you want to play games with finding an alternative antecedent for "this", you are going to have to retract that.

The parent's "This" indeed refers to the "150-Year Green Card Wait for Indian Immigrants Wit..." in TFA.

But as the parent explicitly mentions, "this" (the indian immigrants issue" is "ONE OF" the penalties that the US pays.

He then proceeds and explicitly mentions the larger issue they discuss, which is "the illegal immigration issue".

It's not really hard to parse the obvious fact that the parent expands the scope to the overall issue:

"THIS (the Indian wait issue in TFA) is ONE OF the enormous penalties we as a nation have to pay because neither of our political parties actually wants to solve THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ISSUE".

Obviously he speaks of the "illegal immigration issue" at large.

[fzeroracer]

He was making an inherently disingenuous claim that anyone arguing for immigration reform is called a racist. I have discussed with people the issues in our immigration system and ways to fix it and not once have I been called racist.

Whenever I see someone make that claim, in my experience it's because they've been in favor of racist policies and when called out on it, tend to try and shift the argument into people being against immigration reform period.

[coldtea]

>He was making an inherently disingenuous claim that anyone arguing for immigration reform is called a racist.

He was making a claim based on his experience with people asking for the kind of reform he'd like to see (e.g. stricter rules).

In casual conversation absolute statements ("anyone") are not to be taken at face value, but (through the principle of charity) as the person meaning "in many -or most- cases".

>Whenever I see someone make that claim, in my experience it's because they've been in favor of racist policies and when called out on it

One can be an isolationist ("no more immigration", "we have enough people already", "priority to local workers and building a local skilled workforce as opposed to importing cheaper foreign labor") without being motivated by racial concerns -- and yet in many cases they will still be labelled a racist.

[fzeroracer]

To use your own argument, I was also making a claim from experience that in general, whenever I see someone making that argument they tend to be racist or at least ignorant as to the history of the United States.

And in most scenarios when I've had to argue against isolationists they tend to ignore issues such as Americans refusing to work in certain labor sectors that illegal immigrants tend to work (and be abused without employers being punished, see: farm work) the way we treat immigrants right now (especially those seeking asylum) and so forth which ends up leading to a root motivation of racism rather than any actual practical reasons.

You've also managed to paint them with the stereotypical 'they took our jobs' mindset which, well, tends to thrive in more xenophobic communities.

[coldtea]

>And in most scenarios when I've had to argue against isolationists they tend to ignore issues such as Americans refusing to work in certain labor sectors that illegal immigrants tend to work

Well, that's a question of payment. Raise the salaries, and Americans will flock to those sectors. Instead of artificially keeping the margins up and the salaries low through labor import (which would end to the lowest common denominator race to the bottom among world economies, but usually it stops midway just lowering the options for the higher economies).

[username90]

> they tend to ignore issues such as Americans refusing to work in certain labor sectors that illegal immigrants tend to work (and be abused without employers being punished, see: farm work)

That argument is akin to the argument that we need slaves. Illegal immigrants are second class citizens, they don't enjoy nearly as many rights that legal immigrants does. They can be paid less than minimum wage, be worked harder than legally allowed etc. Of course the low skill sector loves having them, who wouldn't want to hire slaves who can't fight back when you abuse them?

But I argue that California have no need for slaves. If a job can't be filled with legal workers then you raise the wages and conditions. If you can't afford that then the job obviously wasn't critical to our economy and we should let it disappear.