I think you do understand. But for the record, here's the boring centrist bougie liberal take on immigration policy:

1. If we have jobs available, people should be able to immigrate to do them.

2. Changes in enforcement policy should be just. If people are here doing jobs, we should assume that they have jobs worth doing. Norms are norms for a reason.

3. If someone breaks those rules, sure, arrest them and deport them. But not to a gulag in El Salvador.

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cogman10 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'd just push back on the deportation. Why would we want to deport someone that commits a crime? If someone kills someone do we really want to trust that the government we deport them to will jail them? Especially since they have pretty much no way to actually investigate that murder?

Imagine you are canada, A canadan citizen kills an american while visiting. The US immediately deports that person because "they are a murder". What do you do as the Canadian government? Do you just take the US's word that "this person is a murderer"?

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khuey 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

IMO it sort of depends.

For a serious crime like murder you want to imprison them for their sentence and then deport them. You obviously don't want the most serious consequence for a foreigner coming to the US to murder someone to be deportation.

But for a minor crime like shoplifting maybe just tossing them out is fine. Is it worth locking them up for a couple months when you can just wash your hands of them?

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ajross 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For clarity: yes, criminal law would take precedence for domestic crimes. I'm saying that if one presupposes a justly and reasonably administered Immigrant Work Visa program, that it's reasonable to arrest and deport people who sneak in without having such a visa.

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cogman10 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But now you are talking about upending people's lives over misdemeanors. Should we deport someone for speeding?

I just don't see a work visa program as having any benefit. Anyone working in the US should be protected by workers laws the same as if they have a visa or not. Why should we put limits on who can work for who and be employed by who. Who actually benefits from such limits?

	▲	ajross 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Who actually benefits from such limits? People who work. It's just an economic argument. The US (and any other targets of net immigration, really) has a higher wage level than the regions from which the labor is arriving, more or less by definition. That's why the labor force is moving. So if you allow completely unlimited population motion at zero cost, the system will seek to a state where all wages for a given job are the same, everywhere. And that means that we highly-paid Americans end up poorer. Now, is such a world more just? More fair? Maybe! But it's worse for us, and that makes it a politically infeasible solution to argue for. You'll never convince people to live poorer for the benefit of others. A feasible/reasonable/moderate/boring immigration policy would simply ask the question "How much immigration is needed to fill existing jobs (good for growth) without depressing wages (bad for workers)?", and allow that much.

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vkou 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If being undocumented is a crime, people accused of it are entitled to trial by a jury of their peers.

	▲	ajross 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		FWIW, that's not strictly true. We deport non-criminal foreigners for diplomatic reasons all the time. I think it's very reasonable to imagine an enforcement regime (not the one we have) where legitimate workers (and their families, yada yada) have easily-available and auditable visa and citizenship documentation. And so if you find someone who doesn't, there's no failure of due process to simply deport them. Done right, there won't be many cheaters anyway as employers will have easy access to documented labor instead.

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EnPissant 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So your position is people should be able to come to the USA to work any possible job, but not to not work?

	▲	yodon 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> So your position is ... Part of getting past the wonderfully comfortable "restate anyone else's differing opinion in the weakest and most easily attacked strawman form" fallacy is taking the time to think about and engage with the best and most thoughtful form of the other opinion you could imagine that person holding, not just with the weakest and least thoughtful version. Should you still disagree with the best form of their likely opinion, you'll be much better equipped to engage in an actual dialogue that can lead to actual intellectual growth and change, commonly on both sides.