[rel2thr]

Illegal immigration has really hit gig work wages. So many people without valid work visas are sharing/renting uber and other accounts to do work. At least in Texas, I would guess 30-40% of gig workers are not legally allowed to be doing it.

[chaps]

Do you have any source that would agree with your 30-40%?

[alephnerd]

Anecdotally, around 40-55% of my DoorDash (YC S13) delivery drivers can only speak Spanish (I set my deliveries to require a PIN so I meet them), and the style of Spanish they speak is a Central American register (I think Honduran, El Salvadoran, and Guatemalan) based on accent and word choice.

I'm not sure if they are "officially" illegal, but they are most likely waiting on an Asylum or Immigration hearing.

This is in SF.

I can also provide FB groups that sell DoorDash (YC S13) and Uber Eats delivery driver accounts to those who lack documentation if needed.

[chaps]

    I'm not sure if they are "officially" illegal, but they are most likely waiting on an Asylum or Immigration hearing.

Seems like you've jumped from "they only speak spanish" to, "there's a very high chance that they're here illegally".

[alephnerd]

> "they only speak spanish" to, "there's a very high chance that they're here illegally"

Because you cannot get a Work Visa to work for DoorDash or Uber Eats, nor are most Central Americans eligible for Diversity Visas (excluding Guatemalans and Nicaraguans), nor is it family reunification as that has financial assistance requirements, nor are students on student visas legally allowed to work gig work roles.

That only leaves Asylees waiting on immigration hearings (Venezolanos, Colombianos) or TPS (Honduras, El Salvador) - which isn't illegal immigration in formal terms.

While TPS is a legally protected form of immigration, as the kid of immigrants who had to wait 16 years just to get a Green Card and were ineligible for a number of social service programs as naturalization includes proof of income sustainability, it grinds my gears because millions of immigrants have to prove employment or financial feasibility to come here.

There's a reason why Latiné and Asian American voters saw a significant shift to Trump in 2024 (not me - dislike his admin - but I get where those swing voters were coming from).

There needs to be immigration reform, but I absolutely don't have sympathy for economic migrants from Central America gumming up the works for an Afghan or Burmese asylee who will now get deported to countries in the midst of civil wars. And our inability to do so in the Biden admin is what allowed Trump to win in 2024.

[TheDong]

You still don't have enough information to really know; there are plenty of ways to legally be in a country.

They could be on spouse visas, they could be natural-born citizens, born on american soil, but still haven't learned english. They could have been born to an american-citizen-parent abroad, making them american citizens.

Even though family reunification requires financial assistance, that doesn't preclude the dependent doing gig work for extra money beyond the minimum requirements.

There are far more possibilities than "work visa, student visa, asylee".

[alephnerd]

> They could be on spouse visas, they could be natural-born citizens, born on american soil, but still haven't learned english. They could have been born to an american-citizen-parent abroad, making them american citizens.

Absolutely, but the population of Salvadoran Americans growing from 710,000 to 2,500,000 and the population of Honduran Americans growing from 240,000 to 1,100,000 in 20 years, despite El Salvador's population remaining stagnant (Honduras's grew significantly over 20 years).

While not every worker is undocumented or abusing the TPS program, the cases you mentioned above cannot account for that scale of growth for a community.

I sympathize as a 1.5 gen immigrant, but at some point it does feel like a slap in the face when there are millions of us who spent decades stuck in immigration limbo due to visa backlogs AND were inelligible for social services like SNAP, free school lunches, etc as those could disqualify you from naturalization.

And that's why a significant portion of Latiné and Asian Americans flipped in 2024.

[chaps]

I really appreciate this response, thank you. I still think you're making some assumptions about quite a lot of people, eg, a friend of an asylum seekers might join an app together where both friends have vastly different legal situations.

Agreed about the lack of immigration reform from Biden's camp being a significant factor towards Latiné swing voters. DACA has always left me with a feeling that, while it was amazing in letting many folk live safely and able to fulfill themselves, it felt like the patchwork that would lead to zero action, followed by disaster. And it feels like the disaster is manifesting its head.

[alephnerd]

> I still think you're making some assumptions about quite a lot of people, eg, a friend of an asylum seekers might join an app together where both friends have vastly different legal situations

Absolutely! My heuristic is lossy, and the case you provide is probably happening.

> DACA has always left me with a feeling that, while it was amazing in letting many folk live safely and able to fulfill themselves, it felt like the patchwork that would lead to zero action, followed by disaster

Yep. I was working on the Hill for the Ds during DACA and immigration reform.

I had high hopes that we could have found a happy path to help humanize the immigration process, give documented status to law abiding individuals who lacked that, and prosecute and remove the minority of bad actors who give us immigrants (documented and undocumented) a bad reputation.

Sadly, neither the Rs (wanted to dunk on Obama 2) or the Ds cared enough because, to quote the LegAide who I reported to "immigrants can't vote", and this festered into the horrible situation that now exists.

We could have used DACA as a framework to build a more streamlined and ethical legal immigration process, but no one cared.

And so I became a jaded and very well compensated techie

[cute_boi]

Most of them are even on F1 visa working on someone else account. I know because many of indian students do that in NY and I used to ask them when I give tips.

[alephnerd]

Yep! And that's technically a violation of their F1 requirements.

1099 work is not allowed for F1 holders.

[cute_boi]

Agreed, it’s not allowed and is gross violation of F1 requirement. Thats the reason they purchase account and give like 30% of income to person who sells doordash account. Many of them work at gas stations and motels, which is kinda sad. TBH, they don’t have many options because I’m sure most can’t afford tuition fees.

I wish the U.S. government would let them work 20 hours outside of university jobs, since most universities can’t provide enough work for them. The government should also ensure students have enough funds to study in the U.S.—for example, by checking their bank balance for the entire year, not just one day.

[xethos]

Hardly brand new, but at least done by an actual publication. Uber will never want to publish stats for this kind of thing, so I suspect this is the best we'll get for awhile

https://www.wired.com/story/priscila-queen-of-the-rideshare-...

[knodi123]

I'm someone else, but I can vouch that most of my doordash driver names are female, and most of my delivery people are male.

[rel2thr]

nobody could possibly have that data

[alephnerd]

I've been documenting this data on my own with screenshots after seeing a degradation in DoorDash (YC S13) deliveries around 2022, and getting annoyed at having to escalate to customer service or peers at mid-level roles internally.

It's not at all scientific, but it's helped me get my escalations resolved fairly quickly after bringing up some of the data collection and potential liability issues (that cannot be resolved by arbitration ;) ) to their Safety teams.

I don't blame the drivers though. Fundamentally, it's product and operation leadership in Mission Bay (Uber) and Rincon Hill (DoorDash - YC S13) that is causing this - and I'm sure a lot of those guys are on HN as well.

Nothing will happen though, plenty of our peers are tight with this Admin. A16Z, YC, and a number of other funds became close to the Trump admin after the Biden admin poked the bear by proposing changes to unrealized capital gains tax brackets [0][1] along with the OECD Global Tax Deal [2]

[0] - https://www.axios.com/2024/07/17/trump-andreessen-horowitz-t...

[1] - https://www.axios.com/2024/08/23/kamala-harris-unrealized-ca...

[2] - https://rsmus.com/insights/services/business-tax/us-rejects-...

[knodi123]

I would guess based on personal visual observation that at least 50% of doordash drivers are not the person listed on the account. Although over maybe 100 orders, I've only had 2 real problems.

[fHr]

and this corpos don't give one fuck as usual