[quercusgrisea]

I agree with you that the employers exploiting the workers is the core problem. My disagreement is that you can't blame undocumented immigrants for taking the job, they're just trying to survive.

>how [undocumented immigrants] can stay in the country (and even get benefits, send kids to school, etc.) "Immigrants taking benefits" is a big misconception pushed by right wingers and others with anti-immigrant sentiments. Getting any kind of government benefit of significance in the US is hard even for citizens. If you don't have documents they'll laugh you out of the office.

I hope you're not suggesting banning the children of undocumented immigrants from attending school would somehow be more fair. Pretty clearly they didn't have a choice in the matter.

[ajsnigrutin]

I just don't understand how you can send a kid to school without any papers/documents/etc.? Here (in slovenia), every citizen has a citizen ID (not really public, but not secret, and can be generated by hand), you have a permanent resident address, your kid belongs to that school district, your kid has a medical file, documents (medical card too), everything, and without all the papers and the kid being "in the system", there's no way for a kid to go to school here.

If I understand correctly, you can just bring a random kid to school, say "this here is bobby, he'll be going to school here", and they just take him? Without an ID, any checks, checks on parents, etc.?

Same with jobs.... i understand the "under the table" jobs, e.g. picking fruit and getting paid in cash at the end of the day.... this is theoretically possible here too.... but people working in large companies? How do you get paid? How do you even open a bank account? Here, again, you need an ID and a tax number, every bank account is tied to your personal tax number, and you get paid to that account. When you start your job, the company has to pay for benefits (pension, medical, etc.), and those are tied via your tax number and paid directly to the government. Just to start working, you need to pass a medical exam, where they also check your documents, and even check your medical records from your personal doctor.

As I said, i'm not advocating for anything, I just don't understand how you can do all that, without being a citizen, having your ID number, tax number, bank account, ID card, registered permanent residence, etc.

(yes, there are exceptions, foreign workers get temporary tax numbers, and use special documents, kids of diplomats get special documents again, etc., but in general, if you're not "in the system", there's no way to do anything).

[quercusgrisea]

In the US, that is how hard it is to get a government benefit like unemployment or food stamps, but public schools are one exception. There have been several states that have passed laws banning undocumented immigrant, but those laws were ruled to be unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1981 because to deny education to these children would ”deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation." More info here: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/plyler-v.... As you can imagine, people who hate immigrants also hate that court decision, but it's the law of the land and I think it is fair.

The case with employment is pretty different, I don't know much about it other than that the employers figure out how to pay people with cash in a way that they're able to not get caught very often.

But really my point is just that undocumented immigrants work incredibly hard at essential jobs and have very difficult lives, and hating them for not going through a long legal process that's usually not even open to them is unfair.