[0xbadcafebee]

Don't let commenters convince you this is normal. This is a concerted effort by Republicans to win the midterm elections. It's a very old Republican tactic: disenfranchise poor ethnic communities that would vote Democrat.

> The planned EO is one more plank in President Donald Trump’s broader effort to tie his immigration policy to collection of information in the United States, including for voting and Census efforts.

As usual for a Republican agenda, it hurts the economy in order to achieve its ideological goals.

> In addition to legal questions, some policy experts and banks have warned about damage to the economy if people are denied access to the banking system and deposit accounts, as well as potentially big increases in administrative costs for banks. [...] Allowing noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, to legally open bank accounts using documentation, such as an ITIN, means they can pay taxes and avoid being part of the “unbanked” existing in a purely cash economy. Being unbanked is often associated with less ability to move up the social ladder and contribute to economic growth.

[ImJamal]

How is this not normal? Don't most / all European countries require the same?

[0xbadcafebee]

It turns out that most of the world is not Europe. We have our own system, evolved over a century, responding to events in this country. Abruptly changing that system creates real harm to a gigantic population.

We don't have a national ID system, and we have millions of undocumented immigrants, as well as millions of African Americans who have been systematically oppressed in order to elevate the interests of a white majority. (that's not an opinion, it's a fact; our Supreme Court literally wouldn't let southern states change election laws without checking with them, because southern states wanted to eliminate most black people from voter roles)

21 million adults in this country lack a driver's license. Of those the largest groups are Black and Hispanic populations. 11 million more without IDs are undocumented immigrants. That's 32 million people disenfranchised and unbanked. A larger population than most EU countries, without a vote or a bank account.

IF you introduced a national ID system, and got every single American on it, then this wouldn't be an issue, because everyone could still vote and bank. But that's not what they want. They want 32 million people to suffer. That's why this is wrong, regardless of what's common in Europe.

[JuniperMesos]

> 21 million adults in this country lack a driver's license. Of those the largest groups are Black and Hispanic populations. 11 million more without IDs are undocumented immigrants. That's 32 million people disenfranchised and unbanked. A larger population than most EU countries, without a vote or a bank account.

Yes, the entire point of this law is to try to reduce the number of illegal immigrants (11 million is probably an underestimate) physically present in the US by making it harder for them to use banks and by deputizing banks to do some amount of illegal immigration enforcement by way of banking regulations, as we already do for a variety of classes of crime. If they are currently enfranchised at all, it's because they're also voting illegally, and this is a good argument for putting more stringent checks on legal citizenship when people vote.

> IF you introduced a national ID system, and got every single American on it, then this wouldn't be an issue, because everyone could still vote and bank. But that's not what they want. They want 32 million people to suffer. That's why this is wrong, regardless of what's common in Europe.

A huge proportion of that 32 million figure is non-Americans; literally foreigners from other countries who entered or remained in the US in violation of US immigration law. Any of those people voting is a huge problem for actual American citizens. It's not necessarily a problem if foreigners use US banks, just as it's not necessarily a problem if I (an American citizen) use a bank in a foreign country; but if someone avoids using a US bank because they are already present in the US illegally this is a perfectly reasonable outcome because what should be happening to them is that they get arrested and deported.

[0xbadcafebee]

You're saying you want tens of millions of people to struggle to survive. For what exactly? A principle? What, that they should "not do illegal things" ?

This obsession with people violating the law is extremely one-sided. Nobody's going after the tax-dodging criminal corporations that are actually stealing billions of dollars from the government through tax loopholes and offshore accounts. Conservatives don't say peep about a literal convicted felon in the highest office in government. But they're sure happy to go after poor brown people, who just happen to be propping up the economy.

> If they are currently enfranchised at all, it's because they're also voting illegally

Illegals do not vote. (https://www.npr.org/2024/10/12/nx-s1-5147789/voting-election...) Enfranchisement means the ability to take a paycheck and deposit it in a bank. You know, to pay for baby food, clothes, education. To buy a home. To pay taxes. To pay for gas, to go to a job, and contribute to the economy. To send kids to college, who will grow up and become doctors, lawyers, software developers, business owners.

> if someone avoids using a US bank because they are already present in the US illegally this is a perfectly reasonable outcome because what should be happening to them is that they get arrested and deported

You don't even have a clue how much this would screw you over, do you? You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. And all for what? A principle that you wouldn't apply to others the same way?

America has illegal immigrants because we asked for them. We literally have no way to process all our fruit and vegetable produce without underpaid migrant workers. This was made plainly obvious during COVID, when all the crops rotted in the ground, because we blocked migrant workers from coming in and picking crops. We do not have the labor force to do it. We also use migrant workers for a huge swath of construction, hospitality, kitchen staff, because 1) we don't have an equivalent labor force for these jobs, and 2) their incredibly low pay subsidizes the low prices you pay for the end products.

Furthermore, migrant workers are a boon to the economy. They pay taxes. They purchase goods. They provide cheap labor that we profit from. They enable businesses to stay afloat, and small businesses are critical to the US economy. Nobody works harder than an immigrant. And they're working for the country.

And this all ignores the humanitarian impact of torturing millions of people. This is what happened to the Jews in Germany in the 1940's. Millions of people, minorities, used as scapegoats, to justify an ideological war, completely ignoring the reality and hypocrisy underneath. A lack of empathy creates horrifying ends.

[JuniperMesos]

> You're saying you want tens of millions of people to struggle to survive. For what exactly? A principle? What, that they should "not do illegal things" ?

No I want them to physically leave US soil before they have natural-born citizen children on it.

> This obsession with people violating the law is extremely one-sided. Nobody's going after the tax-dodging criminal corporations that are actually stealing billions of dollars from the government through tax loopholes and offshore accounts.

It's not illegal, nor should it be illegal, for a corporation to structure its affairs so that it minimizes the amount of taxes it's legally required to pay; just as it is not illegal for me personally to do this. If there's a specific problem caused by the way tax law is currently structured, the legislature can change it. Honestly though I'm not very worked up about billions of dollars of corporate tax revenue; the US federal budget is multiple trillions of dollars, and I might well be better off if those marginal dollars go to increasing corporate profits (and therefore the value of my stock-market-invested 401k, which is itself a tax dodge) than to the coffers of the US federal government.

> Conservatives don't say peep about a literal convicted felon in the highest office in government. But they're sure happy to go after poor brown people, who just happen to be propping up the economy.

A lot of people who would've self-described as conservatives before the mid-2010s are anti-Trump, and it probably makes sense to retire the term "conservative" as a descriptor in the context of US politics, the environment has changed too much. Poor brown people committing crimes near me - and not just the bare fact of violating US immigration law, I mean murders and robberies and drunk driving and driving big rigs on fraudulent CDLs and the identity theft that many brown illegal immigrants engage in in order to have legitimate-appearing documents - are more of a problem for me than the business records falsification stuff that Trump was convicted of. What it means to "prop up the economy" is pretty ill-defined, but I don't think that poor brown people do so simply by virtue of being on US soil and (sometimes) working jobs illegally.

> Enfranchisement means the ability to take a paycheck and deposit it in a bank. You know, to pay for baby food, clothes, education. To buy a home. To pay taxes. To pay for gas, to go to a job, and contribute to the economy. To send kids to college, who will grow up and become doctors, lawyers, software developers, business owners.

If illegal immigrants really want to use money in the US in violation of US law, they can use bitcoin or monero, money which is specifically designed to be independent of a state with a law-enforcement apparatus. Illegal immigrants paying for goods and services in the US doesn't benefit most American citizens and in some cases it harms them - e.g. illegal immigrants enrolling their children in American schools generally makes those schools work less well for existing American citizens, because being an illegal immigrant is highly correlated with not speaking English well, not sharing American cultural values, and being less cognitively able and therefore requiring more resources to educate.

> You don't even have a clue how much this would screw you over, do you? You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. And all for what? A principle that you wouldn't apply to others the same way?

I already live in a world where I provide legal documentation of my identity to banks and other financial service providers because they are required to ask for it by law. It's already the case that the government can in principle try to screw me over by interfering with my ability to access the legitimate US dollar financial system. I already live in a world where I have been asked to provide proof of legal US residency within several days of starting a job (and I did so because I am in fact a US citizen). I don't think this proposed banking regulation harms me in any way.

> America has illegal immigrants because we asked for them. We literally have no way to process all our fruit and vegetable produce without underpaid migrant workers. This was made plainly obvious during COVID, when all the crops rotted in the ground, because we blocked migrant workers from coming in and picking crops. We do not have the labor force to do it. We also use migrant workers for a huge swath of construction, hospitality, kitchen staff, because 1) we don't have an equivalent labor force for these jobs, and 2) their incredibly low pay subsidizes the low prices you pay for the end products.

No, we have illegal immigrants because a lot of people outside the US see that life in the US is better than it is where they are, and so attempt to gain access to the US. Among US citizens, there is a constituency of people who benefit from being able to hire low-wage illegal immigrant labor or who have other ideological reasons to support loose immigration policy and lax enforcement of existing laws; and other constituencies of people who are harmed by this. Industries that currently hire a lot of illegal labor would either start hiring citizen or legal immigrant labor at higher wages, or invest in more automation. But people, immigrants or citizens, aren't just abstract units of labor; they are human beings who reside in a place, interact with other people living near them, speak a language, have children, etc. and all of these things are relevant to deciding how much the presence of a given immigrant helps or harms existing citizens.

> And this all ignores the humanitarian impact of torturing millions of people. This is what happened to the Jews in Germany in the 1940's. Millions of people, minorities, used as scapegoats, to justify an ideological war, completely ignoring the reality and hypocrisy underneath. A lack of empathy creates horrifying ends.

Imposing a banking regulation that applies to people who are already violating immigration law and who could easily stop violating immigration law by simply returning to their home country isn't torturing people in a way analogous to imprisoning European Jews in concentration camps and using them as slave labor or killing them.

[0xbadcafebee]

> It's not illegal, nor should it be illegal, for a corporation to structure its affairs so that it minimizes the amount of taxes it's legally required to pay

Poor people pay more taxes than rich people. If you think that's fine, then we disagree on basic human morality.

> Poor brown people committing crimes near me [..] are more of a problem for me than the business records falsification stuff that Trump was convicted of

So then it isn't the fact that they're doing something illegal that bothers you.

> illegal immigrants enrolling their children in American schools generally makes those schools work less well for existing American citizens, because being an illegal immigrant is highly correlated with not speaking English well, not sharing American cultural values, and being less cognitively able and therefore requiring more resources to educate.

Aaaaand now we know why they really bother you. These stupid Mexicans don't Speaka Da Engleesh! They're clogging up the schools with spanish-speakers! What are we supposed to do, learn a second language?? Have ESL classes?!

(I grew up in South Florida, so this is especially funny to me. Why don't we deport all of Miami? They speak Spanish there!? Kick Them Out!!!!)

> I don't think this proposed banking regulation harms me in any way

That is a great world view. Screw everyone else as long as I'm fine.

> Industries that currently hire a lot of illegal labor would either start hiring citizen or legal immigrant labor at higher wages, or invest in more automation

Nope. There isn't automation to cover even 5% of the labor out there. Even if there were, it'd be so expensive and take so long to develop that it wouldn't begin to justify the price. That's why we have the labor. And you can't automate skilled labor like cooking meals in a restaurant or building a house - unless you want to convince Americans to buy only prepackaged sandwiches and metal flat-pack homes? Good luck with that?

If our produce/products are expensive, other nations have cheaper labor, so people buy their products rather than ours, so we can't sustain the same business. Which conservatives then respond to with protectionism, which then fails because our products remain too expensive and uncompetitive.

Restaurants close because they can't make a profit and nobody wants to pay $50 for a burger. Construction slows and houses don't get built, causing even the middle and upper class to bristle as they can't buy overpriced homes because nobody can build them because there's no labor force (and even if there were, the homes would be so expensive even fewer people could buy them). We know all this because it's been tried before in different states/cities and nothing changes, because the economics isn't that complicated.

> But people, immigrants or citizens, aren't just abstract units of labor; they are human beings who reside in a place, interact with other people living near them, speak a language, have children, etc. and all of these things are relevant to deciding how much the presence of a given immigrant helps or harms existing citizens

I'm trying not to go there, but it really seems like you're saying "keep those spanish speaking brown people out of my nice white gated community". There's a word for that.

[lo_zamoyski]

Apparently, European ID practices are racist, contemptuous of the poor, etc...

[alexb_]

Yes. "Other people do it" does not make it any less anti-foreigner.