You know what would be a good, meaningful step forward?
an equivalent to the Schengen zone for the Americas
I had to look up what that is and all I can hear in my head RE: objection is "BUT SOCIALISM" from Republicans and "but they'll call us Socialists!" from the Democrats.
Edit - BTW it's the thing that lets the European nations' peoples travel among all those countries without passports and such.
Would you support the policy requirements that would be needed to enable such thing?
Edit: A better example of the American equivalent of Schengen would essentially be the U.S.
Enlighten me on what those requirements are, as you imagine them to be.
You don't get Schengen without an E.U type structure, and that would make the U.S.' voice in politics in those countries even more outsized.
Schengen wouldn't fly with other nations outside the US in the Americas. They wouldn't want a system where they spend money on educating kids, and the kids that do the best go and work in the US where the salaries are much higher and there are many more jobs.
Brain drain is already a known problem in the EU. It would be more pronounced in the Americas I think.
You know what would be a good, meaningful step forward?
an equivalent to the Schengen zone for the Americas
That would be super, super awesome.
However that's gonna be a good 20 year wait at best, not only because we currently have a whole bunch of people for whom anything approaching European is COMMUNIST, anything that could possibly be construed as opening the borders via combination of squinting, lighting changes, heavy makeup, and outright fabrication is UNAMERICAN, and anything involving treating immigrants as actual, living, breathing people as SOFT ON CRIME etc, but because we also need to push against the virulent toxicity of those ideas that are so heavily ingrained in the US legal system and public consciousness.
I really, really hate that such an idea is that far out. It'd also help a bunch with plain economic movement and the like, making supply chains easier to work through etc.
But that's just the internal issues, Fencingsax and Solar have made excellent points as to why it's prolly not gonna fly in other nations.
Schengen wouldn't fly with other nations outside the US in the Americas. They wouldn't want a system where they spend money on educating kids, and the kids that do the best go and work in the US where the salaries are much higher and there are many more jobs.
Brain drain is already a known problem in the EU. It would be more pronounced in the Americas I think.
Any decent writing out there on addressing the issue of brain drain in Schengen style free movement regions?
Tbh nothing more than an accumulation in my brain about the various articles I have read over the years
But I do know that, for example, in the late 2010s Portugal brought in tax legislation which basically cut the amount of tax that expats would pay in half if they returned to Portugal because the problem of qualified Portuguese citizens moving abroad was getting so substantial. I just had a little look and it appears that in 2016 it was estimated that 20% of Portuguese citizens (disproportionately highly educated and qualified as well) were living and working abroad. Which I am sure you will agree is bloody high. And Portugal is a pretty nice place to live, low crime, decent standard of living etc.
I would suspect that if you said to Mexico, Guyana, Columbia, Honduras etc hey would you like to sign up to free movement of labour with the US they'd laugh you out the room. The fear of suddenly all of your educated and qualified citizens just upping sticks and moving to a nation with vastly higher salaries and such would be widespread and not unjustifiable IMO.
Schengen wouldn't fly with other nations outside the US in the Americas. They wouldn't want a system where they spend money on educating kids, and the kids that do the best go and work in the US where the salaries are much higher and there are many more jobs.
Brain drain is already a known problem in the EU. It would be more pronounced in the Americas I think.
This is one of the big reasons people have called the Trumpian "no immigrants at all" stance deeply deeply stupid even if you ignore the moral dimensions and just think in terms of economic numbers. Western countries bringing in foreign workers is a net economic boon for a bunch of reasons. And one of them is that you get to steal people that other countries have spent time developing into useful workers.
The brain drain and further degredation of nations which immigrants are fleeing from is certainly a long-term factor in the sheer volume of people coming over. Ideally we want people choosing where they live based on desire to be a part of a place rather than because their survival depends on it. I just don't see that situation being very likely with all the shit going on, and America's inability to help without oopsing out a coup.
Pandemic aside, while its definitely not on a par with the EU or state to state travel in the US, the US, Canada, and Mexico do have pretty open borders for work due to NAFTA.
A Mexican citizen working for a company can travel pretty easily and freely into the US temporarily and regularly for work functions at their US facilities. Its not residency or frictionless but there are a lot of cross-border workers from both sides of both borders.
Schengen wouldn't fly with other nations outside the US in the Americas. They wouldn't want a system where they spend money on educating kids, and the kids that do the best go and work in the US where the salaries are much higher and there are many more jobs.
Brain drain is already a known problem in the EU. It would be more pronounced in the Americas I think.
This is one of the big reasons people have called the Trumpian "no immigrants at all" stance deeply deeply stupid even if you ignore the moral dimensions and just think in terms of economic numbers. Western countries bringing in foreign workers is a net economic boon for a bunch of reasons. And one of them is that you get to steal people that other countries have spent time developing into useful workers.
point of order: to believe the Trumpian stance is stupid, you have to assume that Trumpers believe foreign workers are people. The conclusion assumes facts not in evidence...
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Schengen wouldn't fly with other nations outside the US in the Americas. They wouldn't want a system where they spend money on educating kids, and the kids that do the best go and work in the US where the salaries are much higher and there are many more jobs.
Brain drain is already a known problem in the EU. It would be more pronounced in the Americas I think.
This is one of the big reasons people have called the Trumpian "no immigrants at all" stance deeply deeply stupid even if you ignore the moral dimensions and just think in terms of economic numbers. Western countries bringing in foreign workers is a net economic boon for a bunch of reasons. And one of them is that you get to steal people that other countries have spent time developing into useful workers.
I have always said that every foreign doctor and engineer who wants to live in the US, should be given a plane ticket and green cards for them and their immediate family.
Schengen wouldn't fly with other nations outside the US in the Americas. They wouldn't want a system where they spend money on educating kids, and the kids that do the best go and work in the US where the salaries are much higher and there are many more jobs.
Brain drain is already a known problem in the EU. It would be more pronounced in the Americas I think.
This is one of the big reasons people have called the Trumpian "no immigrants at all" stance deeply deeply stupid even if you ignore the moral dimensions and just think in terms of economic numbers. Western countries bringing in foreign workers is a net economic boon for a bunch of reasons. And one of them is that you get to steal people that other countries have spent time developing into useful workers.
I have always said that every foreign doctor and engineer who wants to live in the US, should be given a plane ticket and green cards for them and their immediate family.
Pretty strongly agree with this too, though some accreditation and standards seem important. Dr. Nick's Medical Emporium should not be able to record a personalized video saying "Hi everybody! This person is a Doctor!" and we just hand them a green card.
Schengen wouldn't fly with other nations outside the US in the Americas. They wouldn't want a system where they spend money on educating kids, and the kids that do the best go and work in the US where the salaries are much higher and there are many more jobs.
Brain drain is already a known problem in the EU. It would be more pronounced in the Americas I think.
This is one of the big reasons people have called the Trumpian "no immigrants at all" stance deeply deeply stupid even if you ignore the moral dimensions and just think in terms of economic numbers. Western countries bringing in foreign workers is a net economic boon for a bunch of reasons. And one of them is that you get to steal people that other countries have spent time developing into useful workers.
I have always said that every foreign doctor and engineer who wants to live in the US, should be given a plane ticket and green cards for them and their immediate family.
Zach Weinersmith (of SMBC fame) did a book recently going into just the massive economic benefits to the world of no friction borders and how much it benefits both already-developed and still developing nations and the people in them.
It really analyzed every facet of it and concluded there is no reason any society should be opposed that don't boil down to ignorance xenophobia or corruption.
Unfortunately there is no shortage of those three things and as long as ignorant and xenophobic and corrupt people have political power, they remain as the barriers to easy simple low hanging fruit progress. As with everything from climate to poverty to education.
Schengen wouldn't fly with other nations outside the US in the Americas. They wouldn't want a system where they spend money on educating kids, and the kids that do the best go and work in the US where the salaries are much higher and there are many more jobs.
Brain drain is already a known problem in the EU. It would be more pronounced in the Americas I think.
This is one of the big reasons people have called the Trumpian "no immigrants at all" stance deeply deeply stupid even if you ignore the moral dimensions and just think in terms of economic numbers. Western countries bringing in foreign workers is a net economic boon for a bunch of reasons. And one of them is that you get to steal people that other countries have spent time developing into useful workers.
I have always said that every foreign doctor and engineer who wants to live in the US, should be given a plane ticket and green cards for them and their immediate family.
probably nurses and people who still are interested in teaching our kids would at least as helpful.
Nurses are already at a volume where hospitals can screw them over, thanks to successful "become a nurse!" campaigns decades ago. Doctors are much more restricted in number in the US.
Nurses are already at a volume where hospitals can screw them over, thanks to successful "become a nurse!" campaigns decades ago. Doctors are much more restricted in number in the US.
The restriction on doctor numbers is arbitrary.
Engineers are at a volume where firms can screw them over (see H1B shenanigans at various tech firms who just don't want to pay market rates).
The Schengen zone is also made up a countries that are institutionally miles ahead of ahead of where many south/central American and Caribbean countries are. Colombia had an active narco-insurrection ongoing since the 60s until ~5 years ago. Haiti had a coup attempt in February of this year - or alternatively the President is setting himself up for a "President for Life" system.
Latvia might be the Alabama of the Schengen zone(apologies to Latvia), but it isn't the Venezuela of the Schengen zone, because there isn't a Venezuela in the Schengen zone.
Nurses are already at a volume where hospitals can screw them over, thanks to successful "become a nurse!" campaigns decades ago. Doctors are much more restricted in number in the US.
The restriction on doctor numbers is arbitrary.
Engineers are at a volume where firms can screw them over (see H1B shenanigans at various tech firms who just don't want to pay market rates).
That would explain a lack of "become an engineer!" campaigns.
Most of our pent up demand for workers that isn't just "so we can pay them all less" is going to be STEM, which is the current target for the "become an X!" campaigns. So we need to be inviting over more programmers.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
The Schengen zone is also made up a countries that are institutionally miles ahead of ahead of where many south/central American and Caribbean countries are. Colombia had an active narco-insurrection ongoing since the 60s until ~5 years ago. Haiti had a coup attempt in February of this year - or alternatively the President is setting himself up for a "President for Life" system.
Latvia might be the Alabama of the Schengen zone(apologies to Latvia), but it isn't the Venezuela of the Schengen zone, because there isn't a Venezuela in the Schengen zone.
The USA had an attempted coup 3 months ago, and is living under a police state with no public health care and mass homelessness, for the record. If we're going to cast judgment on all the countries America's government is feeling especially racist toward.
The fact that the US is itself both an unstable nation and unwilling to support its own existing population is certainly a factor in many things.
Just trying to lay out that it's a glass-houses situation.
So yeah, the Schengen idea is out. I dunno what I was on last night but frankly I don't trust our government to try and make it happen even if it were interested.
The fact that the US is itself both an unstable nation and unwilling to support its own existing population is certainly a factor in many things.
Just trying to lay out that it's a glass-houses situation.
So yeah, the Schengen idea is out. I dunno what I was on last night but frankly I don't trust our government to try and make it happen even if it were interested.
In the distant distant distant future it might be a great idea, but we need to seriously improve the human rights standards of all areas involved, and we're probably not doing that until the War on Drugs is finally a historical footnote and the two party system in the US is Democrats vs. Socialists instead of Democrats vs. Literal Traitors.
I am not a super border lover at all, generally. I am pro-immigration myself to my own country. Very pro-immigration.
But a geographic border goes two ways. If you decide to open it you should negotiate that with the country that you have the border with. Unilaterally creating a free border with another country is generally a good way to crash your relations with that country. Does Mexico want an open border with the US? I don't actually know tbh. Maybe they do. But I am just saying that on the topic of the US/Mexican border, you need to discuss that with the Mexican government.
Now in terms of accepting immigrants, it does surprise me that the US is so determined to detain immigrants. I mean other countries too. But also the US. I don't really buy any kind of humanitarian reasons either. If the US government is happy for US citizens to starve to death in the street and die of malnutrition and basically just drop into total crushing poverty (and it is, basically, when taken overall) then I don't buy that they would detain immigrants to make sure that doesn't happen to them.
The Schengen zone is also made up a countries that are institutionally miles ahead of ahead of where many south/central American and Caribbean countries are. Colombia had an active narco-insurrection ongoing since the 60s until ~5 years ago. Haiti had a coup attempt in February of this year - or alternatively the President is setting himself up for a "President for Life" system.
Latvia might be the Alabama of the Schengen zone(apologies to Latvia), but it isn't the Venezuela of the Schengen zone, because there isn't a Venezuela in the Schengen zone.
The USA had an attempted coup 3 months ago, and is living under a police state with no public health care and mass homelessness, for the record. If we're going to cast judgment on all the countries America's government is feeling especially racist toward.
The US has some terrible problems but it's still miles better in terms of standard of living then the places most people on the planet live. That's why people are trying to move there after all. Especially in a thread about immigration to the US it's best to keep some perspective on the comparative conditions in various nations.
I am not a super border lover at all, generally. I am pro-immigration myself to my own country. Very pro-immigration.
But a geographic border goes two ways. If you decide to open it you should negotiate that with the country that you have the border with. Unilaterally creating a free border with another country is generally a good way to crash your relations with that country. Does Mexico want an open border with the US? I don't actually know tbh. Maybe they do. But I am just saying that on the topic of the US/Mexican border, you need to discuss that with the Mexican government.
Now in terms of accepting immigrants, it does surprise me that the US is so determined to detain immigrants. I mean other countries too. But also the US. I don't really buy any kind of humanitarian reasons either. If the US government is happy for US citizens to starve to death in the street and die of malnutrition and basically just drop into total crushing poverty (and it is, basically, when taken overall) then I don't buy that they would detain immigrants to make sure that doesn't happen to them.
Personally, I disagree. If the US were to say, "we welcome all!" then I don't frankly care if other countries try to be more regressive. That doesn't mean that the US can force other countries to allow all immigrants or whatever, but just allowing people into the US is not reliant on anyone else agreeing.
Most of our pent up demand for workers that isn't just "so we can pay them all less" is going to be STEM, which is the current target for the "become an X!" campaigns. So we need to be inviting over more programmers.
We already are, and it's being used to suppress domestic wages in that field.
High-end STEM types have effectively unlimited J1/H1B visas in academic research, and there's a well-defined pathway to resident status from there.
Source: That's how I wound up with an EB1. Took about 6 months to swap from an H1B, which was itself converted promptly from a J1 (the latter was least bother to start with).
I was curious why zepherin chose those categories; "always said" implies the poster has had sufficient time to think about that choice, and I'm interested to know who those two things were the priority.
Engineer is so broad a term as to be pretty useless, IMO. I see no reason why someone in the UK with e.g. a job title of "Customer Success Engineer" should be handed a green card when a nurse who held together an ER in a war zone for two years in Sierra Leone doesn't.
And that's without considering the brain-drain aspects, which is formally considered in the US visa system via e.g. the "two year rule" etc.
Most of our pent up demand for workers that isn't just "so we can pay them all less" is going to be STEM, which is the current target for the "become an X!" campaigns. So we need to be inviting over more programmers.
We already are, and it's being used to suppress domestic wages in that field.
High-end STEM types have effectively unlimited J1/H1B visas in academic research, and there's a well-defined pathway to resident status from there.
Source: That's how I wound up with an EB1. Took about 6 months to swap from an H1B, which was itself converted promptly from a J1 (the latter was least bother to start with).
I was curious why zepherin chose those categories; "always said" implies the poster has had sufficient time to think about that choice, and I'm interested to know who those two things were the priority.
Engineer is so broad a term as to be pretty useless, IMO. I see no reason why someone in the UK with e.g. a job title of "Customer Success Engineer" should be handed a green card when a nurse who held together an ER in a war zone for two years in Sierra Leone doesn't.
And that's without considering the brain-drain aspects, which is formally considered in the US visa system via e.g. the "two year rule" etc.
It absolutely is, but STEM is still fairly high-paying. When it drops below $80K then I'd say it's hit that fully abused saturation point. Nurses already make ~70K despite insane expectations on their part.
It absolutely is, but STEM is still fairly high-paying. When it drops below $80K then I'd say it's hit that fully abused saturation point. Nurses already make ~70K despite insane expectations on their part.
Some STEM is highly paid - using the average can severely distort the figure (Jeff Bezos is hardly representative).
It absolutely is, but STEM is still fairly high-paying. When it drops below $80K then I'd say it's hit that fully abused saturation point. Nurses already make ~70K despite insane expectations on their part.
Some STEM is highly paid - using the average can severely distort the figure (Jeff Bezos is hardly representative).
This is why I think picking specific categories for as recipients of an automatic green card is a weird idea.
I think we can safely assume in good faith that this thread is working with averages and not getting into the super specific details. Like a nurse assistant is in a very different situation than a nurse anesthetist.
Looking at immigration as basically talent poaching is fine, but it really isn't what the bulk of immigration particularly 'crisis' at the boarder stuff is really about. The people showing up at the border with everything they own in a duffle bag aren't mostly medical professionals and code ninjas. And in the US wages for a non-HS grad at $606 a week on average. Yes everyone benefits when we bring in new doctors or scientists, but when its laborers-particularly unskilled. Company owners are who benefits, and other laborers are who take the hit. Its only the labor shortage in recent years that has allowed blue collar wages to begin to rise back up to where they were in the past- which is why "Skip college go into the trades" is seeing such a push.
Like pre-pandemic my Trump loving boss was trying to figure out a way for us to get welders in from Mexico because welder wages were "Way Too High" the irony of his position on that, along with "Material prices are too high" when we were engaging in a trade war and adding tariffs was completely lost on him.
Biden issuing "new guidelines" to ICE is laughable. Obama issued guidelines. Hell, the courts issued mandates. ICE has openly defied it all and faced no repercussions for doing so. You cannot expect an organization that is rotten to its core to be fixed by any half-measures or even anything less than full dismantling.
Executive orders overriding some of Trump's executive orders is not reform. Executive orders themselves cannot achieve any appreciable sort of actual reform because they are so easily altered or ceased.
Your final link about expanding housing is telling agencies to find more space for kids, which includes maybe opening more overflow facilities (which as I linked to before, include sites on military bases where toxic chemicals have been illegally dumped) and providing beds that were deliberately kept empty in order to comply with COVID-19 social distancing guidelines.
None of this is fixing the underlying issues, or even really addressing them. It's putting a bandaid on the gaping chest wound and asking for credit for trying to save the patient's life.
So that's the essential issue. Executive actions can only do so much, and legislation takes time and a functional senate. And with some emergent problems (or emergent escalations of existing problems) the infrastructure to fix the issue simply isn't there.
It's frustrating. It's totally right to be mad about.
But you're asking for what they're doing, and what they're doing is either stuff that can be done quickly, or not implemented yet.
Deportations are sharply down, and would be zero but for the lawsuit. The current policies are more restrictive on ICE than they ever were under Obama.
There are distinct, measurable differences between active malice and a good faith effort to fix problems. We should be able to agree on that, just as we agree that much more needs to be done before things are acceptable.
I'm sorry, what? This is the first I've heard about the Biden administration wanting to end deportations, much less being forced to continue performing deportations they have not wanted to have been doing because of some lawsuit compelling them to do so. What is this lawsuit that is the only thing preventing the Biden administration from implementing this apparent goal of theirs to not have any deportations?
Even if you aren't considering most of "the overwhelming majority of people coming to the border and crossing are being sent back" (to borrow Biden's exact words) as deportations because they aren't going through the exact legal process defined as deportation, there are absolutely lots of deportations occurring and not just of the people who have just crossed over the Mexico-US border in the last year or two. To suggest otherwise requires evidence to be presented.
Telling me that ICE they have new rules to follow, in response to me pointing out that ICE has been ignoring rules they don't care to follow for years now, is not convincing or reassuring.
Sorry this is a few pages late, I went to sleep for 8 hours.
ICE arrests and deportations were down in February 2021 compared to the months in the latter half of 2020, that's true. It is also true that there were fewer arrests and deportations in 2020 than any other year during Trump's presidency, due to restrictions created by the pandemic. Lower numbers are good regardless, and I hope that the numbers continue to trend downward. I think it's too early to tell if Biden's new policies or COVID restrictions are the leading factor in this downturn, we'll have to wait and see what the numbers are like in the coming months and years.
Thank you for reminding us about Biden's EO to suspend deportations for 100 days. As myself and others said when it was first made, we doubted it would mean these agencies would actually stop all deportations - and indeed, deportations did continue to happen before the judge made their ruling. A temporary freeze on deportations is a good gesture, but it is merely a delaying tactic and does nothing to address the underlying issues we've been talking about. We are currently on day 75 of Biden's presidency - even if the deportation freeze had gone into effect and was actually being obeyed, do you think that 25 days from now we are going to have the reforms necessary to our immigration laws and policies to stop these enforcement agencies from simply going back to what they were doing before Biden took office? I do not think so. To take a frank and cynical view on it, the 100 moratorium seems like a great way to score good press coverage and have people pointing to it talking about what a good guy he is on immigration without having to do any real and substantive long-term changes to address the underlying issues.
The government could implement programs to provide housing and a stipend and work placement programs to assist homeless Ameicans as well as for foreign migrants.
In fact I am a big supporter of that idea.
There have been plenty of studies showing that providing housing and the basic needs (in other words, a social safety net) for people without homes results in them becoming productive and self-sufficient members of society, and because of that it ends up also being more cost-efficent than criminalizing their existence and having to constantly deal with their "offenses" through the judicial system.
The humane solution that is literally better and less expensive for all involved exists and is known. All that remains is the political will to put it into motion.
Biden issuing "new guidelines" to ICE is laughable. Obama issued guidelines. Hell, the courts issued mandates. ICE has openly defied it all and faced no repercussions for doing so. You cannot expect an organization that is rotten to its core to be fixed by any half-measures or even anything less than full dismantling.
Executive orders overriding some of Trump's executive orders is not reform. Executive orders themselves cannot achieve any appreciable sort of actual reform because they are so easily altered or ceased.
Your final link about expanding housing is telling agencies to find more space for kids, which includes maybe opening more overflow facilities (which as I linked to before, include sites on military bases where toxic chemicals have been illegally dumped) and providing beds that were deliberately kept empty in order to comply with COVID-19 social distancing guidelines.
None of this is fixing the underlying issues, or even really addressing them. It's putting a bandaid on the gaping chest wound and asking for credit for trying to save the patient's life.
So that's the essential issue. Executive actions can only do so much, and legislation takes time and a functional senate. And with some emergent problems (or emergent escalations of existing problems) the infrastructure to fix the issue simply isn't there.
It's frustrating. It's totally right to be mad about.
But you're asking for what they're doing, and what they're doing is either stuff that can be done quickly, or not implemented yet.
Deportations are sharply down, and would be zero but for the lawsuit. The current policies are more restrictive on ICE than they ever were under Obama.
There are distinct, measurable differences between active malice and a good faith effort to fix problems. We should be able to agree on that, just as we agree that much more needs to be done before things are acceptable.
I'm sorry, what? This is the first I've heard about the Biden administration wanting to end deportations, much less being forced to continue performing deportations they have not wanted to have been doing because of some lawsuit compelling them to do so. What is this lawsuit that is the only thing preventing the Biden administration from implementing this apparent goal of theirs to not have any deportations?
Even if you aren't considering most of "the overwhelming majority of people coming to the border and crossing are being sent back" (to borrow Biden's exact words) as deportations because they aren't going through the exact legal process defined as deportation, there are absolutely lots of deportations occurring and not just of the people who have just crossed over the Mexico-US border in the last year or two. To suggest otherwise requires evidence to be presented.
Telling me that ICE they have new rules to follow, in response to me pointing out that ICE has been ignoring rules they don't care to follow for years now, is not convincing or reassuring.
Sorry this is a few pages late, I went to sleep for 8 hours.
ICE arrests and deportations were down in February 2021 compared to the months in the latter half of 2020, that's true. It is also true that there were fewer arrests and deportations in 2020 than any other year during Trump's presidency, due to restrictions created by the pandemic. Lower numbers are good regardless, and I hope that the numbers continue to trend downward. I think it's too early to tell if Biden's new policies or COVID restrictions are the leading factor in this downturn, we'll have to wait and see what the numbers are like in the coming months and years.
Thank you for reminding us about Biden's EO to suspend deportations for 100 days. As myself and others said when it was first made, we doubted it would mean these agencies would actually stop all deportations - and indeed, deportations did continue to happen before the judge made their ruling. A temporary freeze on deportations is a good gesture, but it is merely a delaying tactic and does nothing to address the underlying issues we've been talking about. We are currently on day 75 of Biden's presidency - even if the deportation freeze had gone into effect and was actually being obeyed, do you think that 25 days from now we are going to have the reforms necessary to our immigration laws and policies to stop these enforcement agencies from simply going back to what they were doing before Biden took office? I do not think so. To take a frank and cynical view on it, the 100 moratorium seems like a great way to score good press coverage and have people pointing to it talking about what a good guy he is on immigration without having to do any real and substantive long-term changes to address the underlying issues.
One bill can't fix everything, we'll likely find flaws, and Republicans will almost certainly prevent it or anything like it from passing. But it seems a more fruitful avenue of discussion than just lamenting the lack of legislation.
That proposed bill seems like a big step in the right direction, for sure.
But like with any other systemic issue, we cannot allow ourselves to take the first step and then grow complacent and avoid committing to the further, subsequent steps that must also be undertaken to address and fix the issue.
We really, really need to get more transparency on what's going on inside. It's really easy to bury things if you can't actually examine the progress being made. Society is bad at object permanence.
The government could implement programs to provide housing and a stipend and work placement programs to assist homeless Ameicans as well as for foreign migrants.
In fact I am a big supporter of that idea.
There have been plenty of studies showing that providing housing and the basic needs (in other words, a social safety net) for people without homes results in them becoming productive and self-sufficient members of society, and because of that it ends up also being more cost-efficent than criminalizing their existence and having to constantly deal with their "offenses" through the judicial system.
The humane solution that is literally better and less expensive for all involved exists and is known. All that remains is the political will to put it into motion.
Problem with housing is that the feds can't really do all that much because of how decentralized housing policy is. The AJP is aiming at that by creating an incentive to upzone areas more, but that's kind of the extent of what the feds can do other than provide direct payments to people for housing. The best way to provide housing for people experiencing homelessness or foreign migrants is to increase the amount of housing units available, but that tends to be super highly localized because that's how housing markets are. The best policy may be to create straight procurement of housing materials at lower prices/needed volumes and selling it off at a loss to housing developers just to speed it up.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
It’s very funny how forum engineers have just came back against opening the doors to engineers because they will take our jobs and lower our wages.
Just a bit I just noticed.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Most of our pent up demand for workers that isn't just "so we can pay them all less" is going to be STEM, which is the current target for the "become an X!" campaigns. So we need to be inviting over more programmers.
We already are, and it's being used to suppress domestic wages in that field.
High-end STEM types have effectively unlimited J1/H1B visas in academic research, and there's a well-defined pathway to resident status from there.
Source: That's how I wound up with an EB1. Took about 6 months to swap from an H1B, which was itself converted promptly from a J1 (the latter was least bother to start with).
I was curious why zepherin chose those categories; "always said" implies the poster has had sufficient time to think about that choice, and I'm interested to know who those two things were the priority.
Engineer is so broad a term as to be pretty useless, IMO. I see no reason why someone in the UK with e.g. a job title of "Customer Success Engineer" should be handed a green card when a nurse who held together an ER in a war zone for two years in Sierra Leone doesn't.
And that's without considering the brain-drain aspects, which is formally considered in the US visa system via e.g. the "two year rule" etc.
You do realize that when criteria for these sort of categories is defined it isn't limited to job title, right? Visas being contingent on review of professional certifications and even college/university transcripts is totally a thing in various parts of the world.
Also, an employer isn't going to sponsor the green card if they doubt the validity of their title.
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You don't get Schengen without an E.U type structure, and that would make the U.S.' voice in politics in those countries even more outsized.
Brain drain is already a known problem in the EU. It would be more pronounced in the Americas I think.
That would be super, super awesome.
However that's gonna be a good 20 year wait at best, not only because we currently have a whole bunch of people for whom anything approaching European is COMMUNIST, anything that could possibly be construed as opening the borders via combination of squinting, lighting changes, heavy makeup, and outright fabrication is UNAMERICAN, and anything involving treating immigrants as actual, living, breathing people as SOFT ON CRIME etc, but because we also need to push against the virulent toxicity of those ideas that are so heavily ingrained in the US legal system and public consciousness.
I really, really hate that such an idea is that far out. It'd also help a bunch with plain economic movement and the like, making supply chains easier to work through etc.
But that's just the internal issues, Fencingsax and Solar have made excellent points as to why it's prolly not gonna fly in other nations.
Any decent writing out there on addressing the issue of brain drain in Schengen style free movement regions?
But I do know that, for example, in the late 2010s Portugal brought in tax legislation which basically cut the amount of tax that expats would pay in half if they returned to Portugal because the problem of qualified Portuguese citizens moving abroad was getting so substantial. I just had a little look and it appears that in 2016 it was estimated that 20% of Portuguese citizens (disproportionately highly educated and qualified as well) were living and working abroad. Which I am sure you will agree is bloody high. And Portugal is a pretty nice place to live, low crime, decent standard of living etc.
I would suspect that if you said to Mexico, Guyana, Columbia, Honduras etc hey would you like to sign up to free movement of labour with the US they'd laugh you out the room. The fear of suddenly all of your educated and qualified citizens just upping sticks and moving to a nation with vastly higher salaries and such would be widespread and not unjustifiable IMO.
This is one of the big reasons people have called the Trumpian "no immigrants at all" stance deeply deeply stupid even if you ignore the moral dimensions and just think in terms of economic numbers. Western countries bringing in foreign workers is a net economic boon for a bunch of reasons. And one of them is that you get to steal people that other countries have spent time developing into useful workers.
A Mexican citizen working for a company can travel pretty easily and freely into the US temporarily and regularly for work functions at their US facilities. Its not residency or frictionless but there are a lot of cross-border workers from both sides of both borders.
point of order: to believe the Trumpian stance is stupid, you have to assume that Trumpers believe foreign workers are people. The conclusion assumes facts not in evidence...
Pretty strongly agree with this too, though some accreditation and standards seem important. Dr. Nick's Medical Emporium should not be able to record a personalized video saying "Hi everybody! This person is a Doctor!" and we just hand them a green card.
Zach Weinersmith (of SMBC fame) did a book recently going into just the massive economic benefits to the world of no friction borders and how much it benefits both already-developed and still developing nations and the people in them.
It really analyzed every facet of it and concluded there is no reason any society should be opposed that don't boil down to ignorance xenophobia or corruption.
Unfortunately there is no shortage of those three things and as long as ignorant and xenophobic and corrupt people have political power, they remain as the barriers to easy simple low hanging fruit progress. As with everything from climate to poverty to education.
probably nurses and people who still are interested in teaching our kids would at least as helpful.
Nurses are already at a volume where hospitals can screw them over, thanks to successful "become a nurse!" campaigns decades ago. Doctors are much more restricted in number in the US.
The restriction on doctor numbers is arbitrary.
Engineers are at a volume where firms can screw them over (see H1B shenanigans at various tech firms who just don't want to pay market rates).
Latvia might be the Alabama of the Schengen zone(apologies to Latvia), but it isn't the Venezuela of the Schengen zone, because there isn't a Venezuela in the Schengen zone.
That would explain a lack of "become an engineer!" campaigns.
Most of our pent up demand for workers that isn't just "so we can pay them all less" is going to be STEM, which is the current target for the "become an X!" campaigns. So we need to be inviting over more programmers.
So yeah, the Schengen idea is out. I dunno what I was on last night but frankly I don't trust our government to try and make it happen even if it were interested.
In the distant distant distant future it might be a great idea, but we need to seriously improve the human rights standards of all areas involved, and we're probably not doing that until the War on Drugs is finally a historical footnote and the two party system in the US is Democrats vs. Socialists instead of Democrats vs. Literal Traitors.
But a geographic border goes two ways. If you decide to open it you should negotiate that with the country that you have the border with. Unilaterally creating a free border with another country is generally a good way to crash your relations with that country. Does Mexico want an open border with the US? I don't actually know tbh. Maybe they do. But I am just saying that on the topic of the US/Mexican border, you need to discuss that with the Mexican government.
Now in terms of accepting immigrants, it does surprise me that the US is so determined to detain immigrants. I mean other countries too. But also the US. I don't really buy any kind of humanitarian reasons either. If the US government is happy for US citizens to starve to death in the street and die of malnutrition and basically just drop into total crushing poverty (and it is, basically, when taken overall) then I don't buy that they would detain immigrants to make sure that doesn't happen to them.
The US has some terrible problems but it's still miles better in terms of standard of living then the places most people on the planet live. That's why people are trying to move there after all. Especially in a thread about immigration to the US it's best to keep some perspective on the comparative conditions in various nations.
Personally, I disagree. If the US were to say, "we welcome all!" then I don't frankly care if other countries try to be more regressive. That doesn't mean that the US can force other countries to allow all immigrants or whatever, but just allowing people into the US is not reliant on anyone else agreeing.
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We already are, and it's being used to suppress domestic wages in that field.
High-end STEM types have effectively unlimited J1/H1B visas in academic research, and there's a well-defined pathway to resident status from there.
Source: That's how I wound up with an EB1. Took about 6 months to swap from an H1B, which was itself converted promptly from a J1 (the latter was least bother to start with).
I was curious why zepherin chose those categories; "always said" implies the poster has had sufficient time to think about that choice, and I'm interested to know who those two things were the priority.
Engineer is so broad a term as to be pretty useless, IMO. I see no reason why someone in the UK with e.g. a job title of "Customer Success Engineer" should be handed a green card when a nurse who held together an ER in a war zone for two years in Sierra Leone doesn't.
And that's without considering the brain-drain aspects, which is formally considered in the US visa system via e.g. the "two year rule" etc.
It absolutely is, but STEM is still fairly high-paying. When it drops below $80K then I'd say it's hit that fully abused saturation point. Nurses already make ~70K despite insane expectations on their part.
Some STEM is highly paid - using the average can severely distort the figure (Jeff Bezos is hardly representative).
STEM may already be well below $80k average depending on who you listen to.
I know nurses who make six figures easily.
This is why I think picking specific categories for as recipients of an automatic green card is a weird idea.
I think we can safely assume in good faith that this thread is working with averages and not getting into the super specific details. Like a nurse assistant is in a very different situation than a nurse anesthetist.
Like pre-pandemic my Trump loving boss was trying to figure out a way for us to get welders in from Mexico because welder wages were "Way Too High" the irony of his position on that, along with "Material prices are too high" when we were engaging in a trade war and adding tariffs was completely lost on him.
Thank you for the reply. You put in the same link twice, but I found another article with the stats you are referencing:
https://www.businessinsider.com/deportations-down-nearly-60-since-biden-took-office-2021-3
ICE arrests and deportations were down in February 2021 compared to the months in the latter half of 2020, that's true. It is also true that there were fewer arrests and deportations in 2020 than any other year during Trump's presidency, due to restrictions created by the pandemic. Lower numbers are good regardless, and I hope that the numbers continue to trend downward. I think it's too early to tell if Biden's new policies or COVID restrictions are the leading factor in this downturn, we'll have to wait and see what the numbers are like in the coming months and years.
Thank you for reminding us about Biden's EO to suspend deportations for 100 days. As myself and others said when it was first made, we doubted it would mean these agencies would actually stop all deportations - and indeed, deportations did continue to happen before the judge made their ruling. A temporary freeze on deportations is a good gesture, but it is merely a delaying tactic and does nothing to address the underlying issues we've been talking about. We are currently on day 75 of Biden's presidency - even if the deportation freeze had gone into effect and was actually being obeyed, do you think that 25 days from now we are going to have the reforms necessary to our immigration laws and policies to stop these enforcement agencies from simply going back to what they were doing before Biden took office? I do not think so. To take a frank and cynical view on it, the 100 moratorium seems like a great way to score good press coverage and have people pointing to it talking about what a good guy he is on immigration without having to do any real and substantive long-term changes to address the underlying issues.
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This has come up earlier in this thread and I still agree with what I said then.
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Thanks, the article I intended was the Washington Post one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ice-deportations-immigration-arrests/2021/03/09/af27b164-80fa-11eb-bb5a-ad9a91faa4ef_story.html
Since substantive long term changes are hard to do outside of legislation, should we look at his proposed bill in the House?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Citizenship_Act_of_2021
One bill can't fix everything, we'll likely find flaws, and Republicans will almost certainly prevent it or anything like it from passing. But it seems a more fruitful avenue of discussion than just lamenting the lack of legislation.
But like with any other systemic issue, we cannot allow ourselves to take the first step and then grow complacent and avoid committing to the further, subsequent steps that must also be undertaken to address and fix the issue.
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Problem with housing is that the feds can't really do all that much because of how decentralized housing policy is. The AJP is aiming at that by creating an incentive to upzone areas more, but that's kind of the extent of what the feds can do other than provide direct payments to people for housing. The best way to provide housing for people experiencing homelessness or foreign migrants is to increase the amount of housing units available, but that tends to be super highly localized because that's how housing markets are. The best policy may be to create straight procurement of housing materials at lower prices/needed volumes and selling it off at a loss to housing developers just to speed it up.
Just a bit I just noticed.
You do realize that when criteria for these sort of categories is defined it isn't limited to job title, right? Visas being contingent on review of professional certifications and even college/university transcripts is totally a thing in various parts of the world.
Also, an employer isn't going to sponsor the green card if they doubt the validity of their title.
Not really, no.
But you've not explained your reasoning for carte blanche / vert for doctors and engineers specifically.