[avidiax]

If you really want to get rid of illegal immigrants, you don't need ICE doing sweeps.

Just make them unemployable. Setup an effective employment eligibility system, and require that employers verify the workers in the system before any payment over $100. Collect biometrics from workers and verify against IRS records. Employers that flout this get fines of 10x wages paid, up to N% of revenue, and maybe jailtime for owners and managers that knowingly violate.

What we have in the U.S. is a bunch of people and politicians loudly decrying illegal immigration and illegal employment, but enjoying the fruits of that illegal employment while paying a fraction of what legal workers would have to be paid.

There's huge appetite for a police state against the little guy, and no appetite for that same police state against business owners and managers.

[AnthonyMouse]

There's a better way than that. The way the US tax system actually works is incredibly misleading:

1) We pretend to have an income tax but then make it work like a consumption tax in practice. Ordinary people put earnings in excess of spending in a 401k and defer the tax until they want to spend the money. Rich people defer capital gains indefinitely until they want to spend the money. It's an income tax on paper but a consumption tax in practice, and doing it that way is much more complicated than just using a consumption tax.

2) We pretend to have a progressive income tax, but then impose benefits phase outs that fully cancel out the difference in marginal rates between the poor and the rich. Convert the benefits to cash and eliminate the phase outs and you get something which is equally if not more progressive, significantly more efficient and dramatically less complicated.

So, you can throw all of that out and replace it with a flat rate consumption tax and a UBI and it would be as close to a Pareto optimal improvement as anything in politics ever is.

Which also makes a huge amount of headway against the illegal immigration problem, because another disadvantage of pretending to have an income tax is that it effectively subsidizes anyone paying people under the table since then they're not paying the tax. Whereas if people working under the table still have to pay the consumption tax on everything they buy, and they also don't receive the UBI because they're not lawful residents, they'd be at a disadvantage relative to ordinary citizens, instead of the existing system where breaking the rules makes you better off.

[mothballed]

The tax code is inefficient on purpose. A simple uniform system is politically infeasible, due to the fact our political system relies on pretending to give special favors to every tailored interest group individually (making the tax code even bigger every time).

We arent at a loss of what to change to make it simpler/optimal. We're at a loss at how to make anyone proposing that not lose the election when everyone else is telling each group they'll lose their special carveous and how about I sweeten the deal some more.

[AnthonyMouse]

That part of it doesn't seem like the problem. If you want to make a carve out for some group and you're using a consumption tax then you just don't tax that thing or lower the rate (with the cost of having to increase the general rate on everything else). This is occasionally even a good thing, e.g. have a higher tax rate on petroleum than other things to price the externality, or a lower rate on groceries because they're a necessity.

And many of the carve outs are stupid and we shouldn't do them, but that's a separate layer of complexity/inefficiency on top of the mess we get from trying to pretend that "progressive marginal rate structure" and "means testing government benefits" are useful things to have at the same time when they're the mathematical inverse of one another, or that we want an "income tax" even though we don't want the major disincentive for anyone to have savings or make productive investments rather than immediately spending all income on hedonistic consumption.

[hax0ron3]

I agree that your idea would be better. That said, it is still quite possible that even Trump's immigration approach is overall more good than bad for the country.

[unsnap_biceps]

It's really not. They're deporting less people than Biden did during the same time[1]. They're spending record amounts of money per person deported as well.

I don't disagree that we should be deporting people faster, but this is not the way to accomplish that goal at all. Nor should we be building huge detention facilities. We should be making the process go smoother and faster, not holding people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_in_the_second_Trum...

[ChrisGreenHeur]

If you let in 100 and then throw out 90 you have thrown out many more than if you let in 10 but throw out 30. But the end result is better.

[hax0ron3]

Even if Trump's approach is worse than Biden's, which I'm not sure of, that still does not mean it is bad for the country.

Counting deportations alone does not count people who decide not to come at all.

Also, note that I did not say that we should necessarily be deporting more people. I am actually pretty neutral on illegal immigration. But I am trying to address the question of what is good for the country, which is a different thing from what my personal preferences are.

[Timon3]

> Even if Trump's approach is worse than Biden's, which I'm not sure of, that still does not mean it is bad for the country.

But the discussion isn't about whether it's bad, but whether it's in the countries best interest. If you switch to a less effective & more damaging policy compared to your predecessor, it's not in the countries best interest, even if it's (supposedly) better than nothing.

[pfannkuchen]

Net?

[fakedang]

Trump's immigration approach is not an approach - it's just an excuse for him to create his own Gestapo.

What was the point of sending ICE, a "domestic" agency, to the Winter Olympics, or letting them take over duties from the TSA? What does an "Immigration and Customs Enforcement" agency have anything to do at a foreign country? What's the point of the Secret Service then?