[whyisthewhat]

His policies are designed to selectively terrorize migrant labor and make it impossible for them to have recourse to the state. This keeps wages low because no private businesses are seriously penalized for employing migrant labor, but the laborers themselves are at risk of being brutalized by the immigration authorities if they attempt to seek redress for unfair treatment by their employers.

The way to actually resolve the issue would be to aggressively enforce labor laws without regard to the worker's immigration status, because they would remove the incentive for private business to use migrant labor in the first place.

[m0zg]

It's not "migrant" labor. It's labor which consists of people who _have broken US law_, and it's hired by people who are also breaking US law. It's like that article a few weeks back which called an armed home invader an "unwanted house visitor". These people _can't legally work here_, like, at all. If this is something you don't like, have your congresspeople change the law. Selective enforcement of laws is an insanely slippery slope, you won't like where it ends.

I'm an immigrant myself. I didn't just come here and start working. I had to go through a lot of hoops so that the US would make sure I wasn't going to be a burden and my presence in the US could be good for the US.

[whyisthewhat]

The law is already selectively enforced, which is my point. It's selectively enforced to benefit private business owners at the expense of both migrant laborers (who are brutalized by both the state and extremely harsh and unfair working conditions) and domestic laborers. And the nature of the immigration laws means that non-selective enforcement is impossible, since attempting to do so will always favor the lawbreaking of private business.

The normative question of whether we should or should not harbor resentment or moral outrage against poverty-stricken migrant workers doing backbreaking labor for a pittance isn't really relevant to an analysis of how the government's immigration policies are enforced and who benefits from them.

[rhizome]

What penalty (or penalties) do you think is fair for companies that hire "people who have broken US law?"

[mbesto]

> It's labor which consists of people who _have broken US law_, and it's hired by people who are also breaking US law

Of which Trump himself is guilty of [0]. Why isn't Trump in jail for that specific crime already then? You see the parent's point now?

[0] - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-trump-organization-emp...

[m0zg]

Seems like you wanted to use the verb "was", at least according to the article. And I very much doubt Trump knowingly hired illegals as there are severe criminal punishments for knowingly hiring more than 10.

[mbesto]

> And I very much doubt Trump knowingly hired illegals

I very much doubt any somewhat-savvy businessperson hires illegals "knowingly". In other words, it's just plausible deniability.

[m0zg]

Farmers do.

[mbesto]

Source?

[rhizome]

His position in indefensible, so he's moved on to another thread.