[quote=@Jotunn Draugr]Yah, you could go with the carrot method, and bribe them into doing it. Or you could use the stick, and say "you must attend and pass these classes, or you will not be granted citizenship/residence/landed-status/etc, and you will have to continue hoping your visa can be renewed on time". Of course, this would necessitate enforcement. The United States already has laws and punishments for visa overstays, but they're not regularly enforced. To quote Ann Coulter, "We already have an immigration task-force, JUST LET I.C.E. DO THEIR JOB".[/quote]

I think I brought up before that the "They just need to be allowed to do their jobs" is a political line and describes more or less paying a few people to look for needles in haystacks. Case in point, Ann Coulter said it. She's as trustworthy a figure as quoting, like, Bill Maher or something. Political pundits are not sources. 

[quote]Hold the phone. Why don't you need illegal immigrants to keep Walmart wages poor? Surely, if you vastly reduce the supply of low-skill workers, and the demand is still there (Walmart being America's biggest sole employer), they'll have to do something to entice people to come work for them. When there's a limited supply of workers, and an excess of employers, the employers have to start offering more to beat out their competition, or risk being understaffed and going out of business. 
	How did agriculture, and other low-skill labour ever function, before you were able to bring in cheap Mexicans to do it? Oh yah! It used to be that teenagers and young adults would do it, which is coincidentally the most under-employed group in the country now, more so than ever in American history (possibly excluding the great depression).[/quote]

Low-skill workers are also Wal-Marts base. Limiting the amount of employees doesn't work because it limits the amount of patrons by the same number. This I think is where I really disagree with Trumps economic policies; It's smoke and mirrors, to hide the fact that the conditions the working class are faced with are naturally dictated by the nature of capitalism. This is pure economic snake oil. It's a good position because it's a problem that cannot be fixed (short of Latin America getting its shit together) and therefore can always be there to be blamed on the liberals. 

As for agriculture, this is where illegal immigrant and just immigrant gets mixed together. The migrant agricultural workers, generally legal, have been part of the Western economic culture since, like, there was white people out there owning farms. It exists because the work is seasonal, low paying, not enough to sustain non-migrant populations, and because Americans generally don't like migratory work. Even if Trump manages to somehow get rid of all the illegal immigrants in the United States, Hispanic migrant workers would still be there. Which is good, because getting rid of them would be highly disruptive. You aren't going to be able to empty a bunch of Idaho bedroom communities to get your potatoes picked. 


[quote]	If you want to handle the exploitation, first start enforcing the law. There are entire cities, occupied exclusively by tens of thousands of illegal immigrants each (if not more). These cities are known to the police, but nothing is done. When a local company needs new workers, they can just swing by one of these "sanctuary cities", and pick up two dozen willing workers. Step one is build the wall, to shut off the flow of immigrants. Step two is send the illegals back over the wall, creating a vacuum of low-skill employees. Step three is shutting down the guest-worker program, increasing the vacuum. Step four is simply waiting for the illegal immigrants that are already employed to integrate into society. Before you know it, there aren't any more easily exploitable non-English-speaking foreign workers, and their wages will start rising already, as more and more employers find themselves short on cheap labour, and are forced to pay more to bring them over.[/quote]

That sounds so easy on paper, but it's a lazy dream of a plan. Okay, so you build the wall. The coyotes get clever, illegal immigration becomes a professional deal, and we have a big cement mess on our border for people to bitch about. You drag a few abuellas out of their sanctuary cities, make a few ugly headlines, and what you get out of it is a population stealing industrial jobs from Chihuahua because as it turns out you cannot get rid of them as economic units even if you throw them across the border. You shut down the guest worker program and western agriculture has a fit (probably won't be shut down because of this. Agriculture is a hell of a lobbyist). And what you get is... well, like I said, you've just moved economic units around. If we take a protectionist stance against Mexico and China, our access to cheap products dwindles equal to our cheap labor so that the purchasing power of the average American either stays the same or dwindles. 

Protectionism doesn't work. This is, like, economics 101 from every modern economic theory still in practice. It's populist but it's impractical because it always requires making decisions on half of the information. A competing worker lost is a customer lost, a foreign competitor quelled is a foreign market closed. It sounds good because it allows people to imagine that there is just this one tiny thing in their way, but it's not the way the real world works. 

I guarantee you, grab some modern economic books, the heady academic shit and not the silly pundit to-be-sold-in-grocery-stores stuff, and you'll find immigrants on the backburner to real, and much more complicated, problems. 

	[quote]When we're talking about rising poverty levels, record unemployment, income inequality, human exploitation with conditions akin to slavery, I couldn't give a shit about your ability to get a tasty novelty food category, and no one else who takes this situation seriously should either. If the livelihood of your fellow man, and the suffering of your neighbour to the south, is worth less than a good burrito... Well I just hope you're in the minority. [/quote]

Calm down. Take a deep breath. 

[quote]	I mention Hillary Clinton, because the pro-immigration/amnesty side of this discussion always brings up food as the example of "cultural enrichment", as though this doesn't pale in comparison to real issues. It's such a privileged position to speak from, where your life and livelihood is secure enough that your only concern is getting more food variety.[/quote]

Always? I've done this plenty of times and never saw food come up as a serious argument. It seemed a bit tone deaf that you took it so seriously. 

[quote]Yes yes, I'm not saying they're going to do a good job. I'm just noting that the concept of a border wall is far from unprecedented (Israel is another great example), and that it's a bit ironic that Mexicans are complaining about a wall, when they themselves are building a wall.[/quote]

I guarantee you I don't base my ideas on what the Mexican government thinks. They're to blame for a lot of this. That they'd chase a childish policy like building a border wall is par for the course as far as their poor method of government is concerned. 

	[quote]Yes, crime springs up from poverty, even in our own culture, but America isn't doing itself any favours by importing millions of dirt-poor people, with no education or prospects, who's culture (language included, of course) conflicts with the local culture.

	I'd like to note that the influx of Mexican labour driving the wages down, and sucking welfare money out of the system, sure isn't doing the poor any favours, and may even be contributing to the conditions that result in white ghettos. Also, where are these locals getting their hard drugs from in the first place? Ten bucks says it's from Mexico.

	Of course, everything is a matter of scales and degrees, but the more socio-economical-cultural division we have, the more likely we are to get these unlivable, inhospitable sections of our own country.[/quote]

The drug problem is incidentally where I come to agree with you here. Whereas the economic argument might be diversionary at best, the drug problem is something we should really be focusing on. A big part of Mexico's problem, and really our problem as well, is the cartel empire in the north pushing drugs over the border. There is nothing good coming out of that. Now, I don't think a wall will fix that issue, but moving resources currently committed to chasing abuellas, or cracking down on drug-users or the production of soft drugs, to deal with the hard drug problem, that seems like it would be good policy. 

But the rest of it is weak. The world economy as it stands now is global. A Mexican stealing an American job in Tulsa, if sent back over the border, will steal another job in manufacturing. If we went back to the high tariff system, Mexico (or China or whoever) would reciprocate and our access to cheap goods would diminish. You can't really find the 'Golden Capitalism' or whatever, what you see is what you get. 

Illegal immigration is as it stands a cheap populist issue the right likes to use because they know it can't go away, and because they have maneuvered themselves into a place where they can always blame liberals on it. It's like a pinata with an endless supply of candy (or whatever a Trump regime would rename it. A Freedom Beating-doll?). Hell, I'm not even particularly offended at the idea he may try, because whereas I think he's chasing unicorns, It's not like anybody is suggesting anything growed up yet. Because really, the thing that annoys me about it is that we'd waste so much resources chasing such a stupid fix, taking away energy from any real fixes. But for that to be a problem there would have to be somebody trying to get a real fix in place, and we aren't really spending the energy to do so yet. 

It's like we are biding our time until the whole system blows up or something. What do we do in the mean time, watch Trump pollute a few news cycles beating up field workers, or watch Hillary basically do nothing and tell us everything is fine? Neither does much of anything that'll have a good effect, so we are basically just choosing how we are going to fuck up.