Objectively speaking, what harm is caused by illegal immigration? (Thought experiment)

[Anonymous]

Why is this a "thought experiment"? The topic is well researched.

[Anonymous]

We shouldn’t have illegal immigration because it’s illegal. Our country is based on the rule of law. Don’t do illegal stuff. This goes for Trump as well. I’m opposed to law-breaking. It’s unfair to everyone else and causes disorder and chaos.

I’m fine with lots of high-quality immigrants who are smart and hard-working and can support themselves and their family and love America, as long as it’s through legal channels.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is significant cost to school systems for the extra seats, plus extra ESL and other services.

This. That's why they prefer immigrants from countries where the dominant culture values education. You would be surprised how many Latin American illegals are illiterate in Spanish. How are they going to learn English when they can't even read in their own language? Sad but true. They may be nice and hardworking but they are unfortunately a drain on limited resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We shouldn’t have illegal immigration because it’s illegal. Our country is based on the rule of law. Don’t do illegal stuff. This goes for Trump as well. I’m opposed to law-breaking. It’s unfair to everyone else and causes disorder and chaos.

I’m fine with lots of high-quality immigrants who are smart and hard-working and can support themselves and their family and love America, as long as it’s through legal channels.

The more we tighten legal channels to an impossible level, the more we will have illegal, unvetted immigration. If you want this, you have to actually open up legal channels and make it easier. We have plenty of room to grow and - disagreeing with the current administration based on my personal lived experience - diversity DOES make us stronger.

[Anonymous]

Whether legal or illegal, it isn’t good for us to just open the floodgates and let whoever wants to gush in. It needs to be a measured flow, and sadly that means not everyone will be able to come.

Levels must be controlled in order not to strain resources. Too many new workers at once put downward pressure on wages and standards.

Also, I do not want us to become like London.
We are a diverse control but we do share culture and values and it’s not good to have people coming in who have no interest in assimilating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whether legal or illegal, it isn’t good for us to just open the floodgates and let whoever wants to gush in. It needs to be a measured flow, and sadly that means not everyone will be able to come.

Levels must be controlled in order not to strain resources. Too many new workers at once put downward pressure on wages and standards.

Also, I do not want us to become like London.
We are a diverse control but we do share culture and values and it’s not good to have people coming in who have no interest in assimilating.

Having grown up with many friends who were all first generation (Haitian, Greek, Peruvian, Italian, Indian/Hindu, Indian/Seikh, Thai, and more), I think the assimilation concerns are overblown. Inevitably, the kids assimilate. Even years ago, immigrant parents wanted their kids to marry into the same culture/religion and inevitably every friend married outside of it. I think the assimilation concern is fear mongering propaganda from Republicans and my lives experience anecdotally contradicts it.

FWIW, I do not believe religious extremists have a place in our government, but that includes Christian extremists. Look at a lot of the misogynistic talk from the Christian right like Hegseth basically supporting repealing women's right to vote or revering a guy like Charlie Kirk who believed women should submit to their husbands (heck, even Laura Ingalls Wilder rejected that one in the late 1800s). I don't get why Republicans accept that yet would get mad if a Muslim leader said it.

[Anonymous]

Frumpy middle-aged wallflowers would simply find another cause for their fake outrage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Frumpy middle-aged wallflowers would simply find another cause for their fake outrage.

Why are they so worked up about illegal immigration right now? Ae they competing for the same jobs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is significant cost to school systems for the extra seats, plus extra ESL and other services.

This. That's why they prefer immigrants from countries where the dominant culture values education. You would be surprised how many Latin American illegals are illiterate in Spanish. How are they going to learn English when they can't even read in their own language? Sad but true. They may be nice and hardworking but they are unfortunately a drain on limited resources.

But their kids get educations, while the maga seem to languish in generational ignorance.

[Anonymous]

An unregulated immigration system simply provides entry to anybody who has the opportunity or resources to cross the border, regardless of what they can contribute, whether they are the best person to do that, and their likelihood of being able to integrate.

A regulated immigration system should (ideally) identify those people who can best contribute to a country. It should identify skill gaps and ways to assess the best people to fill these. It should also screen for any medical conditions or health issues.

For example, ideally you want anybody immigrating to a country to be a healthcare worker to have verifiable qualifications and to be screened for TB, HIV, maybe syphilis, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:An unregulated immigration system simply provides entry to anybody who has the opportunity or resources to cross the border, regardless of what they can contribute, whether they are the best person to do that, and their likelihood of being able to integrate.

A regulated immigration system should (ideally) identify those people who can best contribute to a country. It should identify skill gaps and ways to assess the best people to fill these. It should also screen for any medical conditions or health issues.

For example, ideally you want anybody immigrating to a country to be a healthcare worker to have verifiable qualifications and to be screened for TB, HIV, maybe syphilis, etc.

Healthcare workers are not routinely screened for HIV for hiring - only if they had an accident resulting in their own exposure to a patient's blood/bodily fluid.

Syphilis? Hahaha no we are not screened for that. TB, yes. Measles/MMR, varicella, sure, we are screened for immunity/prior vaccination.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An unregulated immigration system simply provides entry to anybody who has the opportunity or resources to cross the border, regardless of what they can contribute, whether they are the best person to do that, and their likelihood of being able to integrate.

A regulated immigration system should (ideally) identify those people who can best contribute to a country. It should identify skill gaps and ways to assess the best people to fill these. It should also screen for any medical conditions or health issues.

For example, ideally you want anybody immigrating to a country to be a healthcare worker to have verifiable qualifications and to be screened for TB, HIV, maybe syphilis, etc.

Healthcare workers are not routinely screened for HIV for hiring - only if they had an accident resulting in their own exposure to a patient's blood/bodily fluid.

Syphilis? Hahaha no we are not screened for that. TB, yes. Measles/MMR, varicella, sure, we are screened for immunity/prior vaccination.

I think you misunderstood. I’m saying a healthcare worker applying to immigrate to the US should be screened, not that healthcare workers already here are screened. Is that not the case?

[Anonymous]

Up next. Thought experiment. What would society be like without immigration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let's say all the undocumented immigrants and asylees and refugees were suddenly, magically removed from the country and replaced by citizens. What would be different? I'm going to assume that these citizens would be employed in the same jobs as this group of people currently is, so I'm not talking about shortages of landscape workers, slaughterhouse workers, ag workers, disaster cleanup workers, and so forth. According to statistics we would have a somewhat higher crime rate. Probably a somewhat higher rate of illegal drug use (migrants are less likely to use drugs). I'm assuming we need the population numbers, including to support the social security retirement program. We might have a larger burden on assistance programs if pay rates for the people who replaced them did not change, but we wouldn't be able to blame immigrants for that. Seriously, I wonder what the actual threat to borders has been. While supposedly Biden opened the borders we didn't have terrorist attacks from people who had slipped through as far as I know.

If in this thought experiment these people were not replaced magically, we would certainly have shortages of healthcare aides, maintenance workers, ag workers, meat processors, roofers, and disaster cleanup workers. Not only would there be fewer people to care for elderly people who need to be cared for, there'd be fewer people paying into Social Security to pay for their retirement income (which, in long term care, usually goes to the LTC facility).

I also wonder about the issue with assimilation. What exactly does that mean? Learning English? Most people who are able to do so to learn English one way or another, but if not, so what? It seems to me most people who complain about lack of assimilation are complaining about language and clothing as the most visible attributes of a population that is not assimilation.

Is it the slippery slope theory? That if a significant number of people manage to cross the border illegally every year and to stay for an extended period of time it will become an uncontrolled avalanche? Would it have been a bad thing if immigration laws had been changed to make immigration much, much more accessible legally and reduce the burden on the systems set up to deal with illegal immigration?

I'm truly trying to consider a blank slate take on this.

Congress would analyze the pros and cons before setting quotas per country. If it is illegal, it circumvents settled law on controls. There are reasons for those controls.

Do illegal immigrants have any loyalty to the US? Any driving desire to assimilate? Learn the language? Is it an economically controlled or uncontrolled situation (see remittances). Does the migration starve the source country of intellectual knowledge? Is the illegal immigrant a burden on the social welfare system (short term or long term)? What are their political views? Do they ACT like they agree with the political and social constructs we've set through our laws (see Bosnia-Herzagovina) and the tragedy of balkanization.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An unregulated immigration system simply provides entry to anybody who has the opportunity or resources to cross the border, regardless of what they can contribute, whether they are the best person to do that, and their likelihood of being able to integrate.

A regulated immigration system should (ideally) identify those people who can best contribute to a country. It should identify skill gaps and ways to assess the best people to fill these. It should also screen for any medical conditions or health issues.

For example, ideally you want anybody immigrating to a country to be a healthcare worker to have verifiable qualifications and to be screened for TB, HIV, maybe syphilis, etc.

Healthcare workers are not routinely screened for HIV for hiring - only if they had an accident resulting in their own exposure to a patient's blood/bodily fluid.

Syphilis? Hahaha no we are not screened for that. TB, yes. Measles/MMR, varicella, sure, we are screened for immunity/prior vaccination.

I think you misunderstood. I’m saying a healthcare worker applying to immigrate to the US should be screened, not that healthcare workers already here are screened. Is that not the case?

Hospitals do that screening, yes, I was clarifying what they screen for. Thr Syphilis suggestion was kind of funny.

Anyhow, hospitald screen the same no matter if you are a US citizen or not, so for that particular job, the government does not need to handle screening. You would not be barred from the job if not immune, just vaccinated for what you are missing. My hospital has an entire occupational health department that oversees that.

TB would really be the one concern, but we don't have an adequate vaccine for it. There is a BCG vaccine for TB in some countries but it is kind of irrelevant as it is mostly done for prevention of TB meningitis in children, but does not adequately prevent pulmonary TB (which would be the contagious form). We would check for latent TB (not contagious) and treat it and screen to ensure it is not active/pulmonary TB. But again, that screening is done by hospitals for US citizens as well as we still have TB in the US and healthcare workers are already higher risk.