[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.

[fzeroracer]

I don't disagree. Illegal immigrants in the US are treated horribly, paid poorly and pay taxes for benefits they don't even receive.

However, there are a lot of industries in the US propped up by the low cost of illegal immigrants and often abused by (ironically) Republicans. We can't actually fix those jobs because the margins are too thin to survive without that source of extremely cheap labor. We've created a dependence on what is effectively slave labor, and those jobs are generally critical to our country especially as we move more towards isolationism.

These are all important issues to consider when thinking about real immigration reform.