[wow_yes]

We must defund and destroy not just ICE but the paramilitary system that it is a part of (FBI/DHS/etc).

If you buy into the IPO, if you work at Palantir, or if you financially gain from this ecosystem you are profiting from the racist deportation of people who just want a better life.

I've never heard of a downside to having a large talent pool - how could there be?

[jmpman]

What about the poor people in the US, whose hourly rate is lower because of the flow of illegal immigrants? Aren’t the poor in the US disproportionately minority?

Yes, there is a downside of having a large “talent” pool of unskilled labor. If you’re a high school dropout, US citizen, you’re competing with this “talent” for handyman jobs, landscaping, house cleaning, etc.

Sure, it’s great to have cheap landscaping, but before you dismantle ICE, go speak with a US citizen who’s doing roofing, and ask if their income would be higher without the illegal immigrants.

[Jtsummers]

Blame the employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants, then. If they weren't breaking the law by hiring them, then there'd be greatly reduced motivation to travel here and work illegally (versus attempting to come in legally).

[Cuuugi]

Why can't you blame both? Both are "technically" breaking the law?

[Jtsummers]

Sure, you can blame them both. Like many things multiple parties are responsible for the issue. But one group, in this case, is tacitly (and sometimes explicitly) inviting the other into the US to participate in the illegal job market. So, at least from my perspective, that puts a larger portion of the blame on the employers. They're also (along with enforcement agencies, again focusing on the employers) the only ones in a position to meaningful reduce the illegal job market.

Actually fine these businesses, threaten them with being shutdown and actually shut the worst offenders down. They're probably in violation of quite a few labor and tax laws as well, beyond just the issue of who they hire.

[geofft]

There's a couple of answers here. The big one is that if you're here illegally, you already know you have limited (though not zero!) recourse to the law, so you're willing to take illegal jobs - jobs that pay below minimum wage, jobs that are cheaper for the employer because safety standards are being ignored, etc. Immigration law is one way in which the law regulates the labor market; labor law itself is also part of it, and if we're going to talk about upholding the law, let's take both into account. If we were to include significantly more migrant workers under legal immigration, they would have effective access to the protections of labor law, which means they have less room to undercut US citizens.

They'd also have more access to jobs that tend to effectively require work authorization. You can pay a fellow in cash to work on your roof without going through E-Verify; you can't quite easily pay a fellow in cash to work at a major fast food chain or drive a school bus or be an SRE at a thousand-person tech firm or whatever. So increasing legal immigration may have the effect of reducing the labor supply for house and farm work.

More generally, the economy is a complex thing, and each change you make has many effects. The wage for roofers is determined by both supply (number of potential roofers) and demand - if more people live here, there are quite literally more roofs. While I'm not saying this by itself is likely to save the roofing-labor market, I do think that there are likely broader effects from increasing our pool of legal immigrants besides the most obvious one of depressing wages, and we should look at more than just the extremely short term.

And in the long term, if population growth keeps up, the pool of unskilled labor with domestic work authorization is going to go up on its own. If our economy/society can't handle that, we should be figuring out how to address that anyway.

(This is all a bit orthogonal to dismantling ICE - I do agree that having an underclass of laborers without equal protection under the laws is bad for everyone. I just don't think that ICE is a morally justifiable solution to that problem. We should create more "proper pathways" for people to become documented residents and authorized workers, but until we do so, I don't think having ICE around makes things better.)

[kongolongo]

If you professionally write software that runs on or own any electronics with semiconductors or lithium ion batteries you are profiting from child slavery, war, and exploitation of workers through the rare-earth elements mining industry that provides the raw materials to produce these devices. That's not to mention the crimes committed during manufacturing chain of said devices.

This is an impossible moral standard. Yours is just as impossible. The FBI and DHS do a lot more than just deport immigrants. Palantir does more than just aid in deporting immigrants. If everything were so black and white the above statement would likely describe what you do as well.

[geofft]

I'd rather live in a world where we object to all of these crimes than one where we object to none of them.

[zepto]

Sure, but the point I think is that every one of us is actually benefitting from the proceeds of these ‘crimes’ in real time.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care or ‘object’ to them.

What it does mean is that finger pointing and trying to act like we aren’t part of the problem but ‘they’ i.e. Palantir etc, are, is simply a way of pretending we aren’t complicit.

If borders are a problem, we need to solve that problem by working out a path to eliminating them that actually minimizes harm.

We can’t do that if all our energy is spent on branding people ‘criminals’ and ‘objecting’ to them when we’re part of the same system ourselves.

[geofft]

Sure, yes, I agree with that.

I think the point here is that Palantir presents itself as not participating in deportations or other widely-considered-distasteful things, and yet they do, and that deserves particular outrage.

I think it's quite reasonable for a company to say we don't know exactly what our supply chain looks like and the only way anyone can build electronics is to use somewhat-questionable supply chains, but we'll do the best we can and and take action if we know of specific instances of harm (e.g., avoid known-bad suppliers), because that's the only way to do better. I think there's a number of food companies and clothing companies that do the same thing about working conditions in their supply chains, too. Palantir isn't doing that - they're speaking out of both sides of their mouth, saying "of course we aren't doing it" while directly being involved. If Palantir were to say, for instance, that they understand their product could be used in this way, they're not interested in providing services for deportations and will cut off customers who are using it for that or indirectly providing services for other organizations doing that, then the public reaction would be very different.

(They could also say "Palantir fully supports the mission of America's law enforcement including ICE and ERO, work here if you want to support law and order and make America great again," and then nobody would accuse them of hiding what they work on.)

[kongolongo]

>I think it's quite reasonable for a company to say we don't know exactly what our supply chain looks like and the only way anyone can build electronics is to use somewhat-questionable supply chains, but we'll do the best we can and and take action if we know of specific instances of harm

No major semiconductor companies really does that that and definitely no tech company using the devices made by those semiconductor companies do that either. And even if they said they did it is still happening, so by the same standard this article is finding Palantir culpable of the deportations, I'd say its fair to find every tech company culpable of child slavery and exploitative mining practices as an example.

If it weren't Palantir it would just be another company. It seems pointless to focus on them specifically or ICE or any of the enforcement agencies for that matter when what seems to be the actual driver is the policies and laws that necessitates their existence. Seems like focusing on changing that is a much better target if you cared more than just assigning moral blame. Whether or not Palantir denies anything doesn't really change much if the outcomes are the same.

[zepto]

That’s a fair point, but it’s also fair to say that the reporting and comments do in fact conflate these two things, which is a similar problem in its own way.

[gruez]

>you are profiting from the racist deportation of people who just want a better life.

This seems like a oversimplistic take on undocumented immigrants. Yes, they just want a better life, but they're also violating immigration laws to do so. Not deporting them sends a signal that violating immigration laws okay and disincentives people from going through the proper channels.

[foogazi]

> I've never heard of a downside to having a large talent pool - how could there be?

There are already laws in place for expanding the talent pool: student visas, work visas, seasonal worker visas, family visas, lottery visas

If more are needed can the allotment be increased instead of relying on black market sources?

[beervirus]

Do drug smugglers "just want a better life"? Is it racist to deport them?

Is it racist for a country to have and enforce borders at all?

[thisiscorrect]

Many in the US (and to a lesser extent Western Europe and Australia) seem to answer that last question with a "yes." It's never addressed why border controls by China, Mexico, or really any non-Western country aren't also "reprehensible."

[francis_t_catte]

Considering borders are meant to control access to wealth and opportunity, you could argue the answer to all of your questions is very much "yes".

[stronglikedan]

Borders are not meant to "control access to wealth and opportunity". One thing they actually do is keep social welfare programs in check. That's just not possible when you can't control the number of recipients of these benefits, much less the number of non-contributors, but it is possible when legal immigrants receiving these benefits can be counted as such.

[zepto]

Where is it defined that ‘borders are meant to control access to wealth and opportunity’?

I meant that seems like something you could argue, but it also seems very reductive and certainly not a given.

[mancerayder]

Which first-world countries in the world have open, unlimited immigration?

Have we thought critically about the positive aspects of border control? Or have we created drawn a moral line in the sand and refused to take up the rationales that may exist and address them? For example, have we put on our thinking caps and thought about how to preserve welfare states in the face of budgets and headcount?

[Bancakes]

Sorry, but I find that to be an immature, reactionist post - how is it racist if it's about nationality and legla status? Illegal immigrants cheat not just the system, but legal immigrants, and themselves. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by applying for H-1B or other processes to earn a better life. Consequently, you lose nothing if you are deported, since you received a free tour ride out of Uncle Sam's own pocket.

Everyone wants an owned house, a nice car, a stable job, and a loving family next to them. You have to earn it. Get in line, haha. If we allow illegal immigration, we're destroying people's chances to stay professionally and legally competitive with each other, and working and integrating yourself in a new country is devalued.

You can't keep living under Damocles' sword of being thrown out at a moment's notice, serving as blackmail for your employer and nemeses. Why not earn the citizenship and the right to vote - to do something about Trump, Biden, and other such politicians? To make sure you can fund your children's college before someone from 4chan doxxes you to the authorities?

I'm sorry I'm surrounded by people who believe in impossible goals like world peace and lack of borders.

[gotoeleven]

And the worst part is that Palantir's software often misgenders and deadnames the trans migrants of color and they end up in the wrong holding cell.

[Cuuugi]

So if they were Cis-gendered white people you wouldn't give a crap?

[jethro_tell]

Infact, if all your economic projections are based on continued growth, both in production and consumption, were going to need more people in this country. The process and the legality aside, the only ways to increase GDP growth is to create more efficient workers or increase the number of workers. The other option is a deep, self inflicted, down turn like Japan had for 20 years.

There's room for lots of people and there's going to b a need for more people in this country as the boomers finally retire in their 80s.

[thisiscorrect]

The (completely reasonable) alternative is to avoid a system that only works when there's permanent exponential growth in a finite world.

On top of that, growing GDP is different from improving average quality of life. If GDP goes up 10% by growing the population 20% through mass immigration, it's plausible quality of life will go down in aggregate. Why is GDP growth the right metric?

[jethro_tell]

I'm with you. Unfortunately, unless we change they system around so it doesn't have to grow forever, the weakest are the ones that get screwed as the economy shrinks.

You can't have it both ways, unfettered capitalism with continued growth and negative population growth.

GDP is not the right metric to show increase of quality of life, but it is a quick metric to show economic expansion and contraction.

There's a much broader conversation about how we want out system to work.