[jonhohle]

Your last point is rarely discussed and incredibly unfortunate. We’re creating a lower class of citizen who must exist in the shadows, constantly fear being relocated, and can easily be exploited for labor or worse. Then somehow this is packaged as being humane in some way.

[romwell]

...while being simultaneously vilified for "taking our jobs" and being "dangerous" (whereas they are being very deliberately used to generate profits).

You are making a solid case to issue permanent residence permits to all undocumented workers (since our economy would, at this point, collapse without them), and - most importantly - punish employers with prison time for hiring people unauthorized to work going forward.

That's it, illegal immigration problem solved.

Employers like that are having their cake and eating it, too. The undocumented workers are the ones who get punished for their employer's crimes. Sorry, I'm not going to cite sources, as I've yet to hear about anyone going behind bars for hiring illegal immigrants.

EDIT: never mind, here's a source[1]. It wasn't hard to find.

>For example, the latest available data show that during the last twelve months (April 2018 - March 2019) only 11 individuals (and no companies) were prosecuted in just 7 cases. There were no prosecutions during either of the last two months.

Corporate employers aren't even being prosecuted. This tells you everything about the hypocrisy of the entire system (and anti-immigration rhetoric in particular, whether legal or illegal).

EDIT 2: "sporadically" hiring illegal workers isn't even a crime punished by prison [2]. Yay.

[1] https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/559/

[2] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

[FireBeyond]

I always go back to the Tyson Chicken raids a few years ago to show just how broken this is.

ICE officials raided a few facilities a few years ago, and actually found about 900 undocumented workers.

Many of them gave evidence to officials, including written instructions from the company that advised them how to fill out employment, banking, taxation paperwork if they "didn't have documentation", i.e. Tyson didn't just know this was the case, they were actively enabling it.

And in press conferences, when journalists asked "Are there any plans to investigate the company or issue fines or charges?", the response? "We are not considering that at this time."

What it actually ended up looking like, with some other safety issues raised around that time is that Tyson perhaps decided their undocumented workers were getting a little too angry about poor safety standards, and making waves. It would be entirely unsurprising if Tyson made a sweetheart deal with ICE that said "Hey, if you come to these plants, you'll get to make this big stink about undocumented workers" (and remember, this was during the Trump administration), "but in return, can you leave us out of it?", shades of "Won't someone rid me of these meddlesome workers?"