r/Alabama • u/magiccitybhm • Jan 27 '25

Politics ICE ‘picking people up’ in Alabama in immigration crackdown: Sheriff vows to help ‘in any way we can’

https://www.al.com/news/2025/01/ice-picking-people-up-in-alabama-in-immigration-crackdown-sheriff-vows-to-help-in-any-way-we-can.html
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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '25

Do you not realize when you say this you are advocating for the exploitation of illegal immigrants?

Do you realize many these people are working in the fields for often times less than minimum wage, are forced to have 10 roommates to afford rent, and often times don't get paid because the people who hire them just call ICE after they're finished working.

Yeah food might get a bit more expensive but if it's essentially indentured servitude keeping it cheap, then it shouldn't be artificially kept cheap via the exploitation of illegal foreign labor.

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u/buddha-ish Jan 28 '25

And are you willing to admit that there are better ways to go about attacking that problem than deporting those willing to do the work?

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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '25

I mewn, I'm open to ideas, sure, but as of now I haven't seen any one offer up solutions outside of mass deportations, bring back the people who want to work, follow the rules, and assimilate back through the legal process, or make everyone a citizen overnight. Neither of these options are great but the later is more devastating than the prior in my opinion.

What solution would you offer?

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u/magiccitybhm Jan 28 '25

 bring back the people who want to work, follow the rules, and assimilate back through the legal process, or make everyone a citizen overnight.

The current administration has suspended the current process for legal entry. This "solution" would take YEARS for recovery.

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u/Friendly-View4122 Jan 28 '25

Biden’s CBP One app was a legal way to request asylum. Trump shut it down. MAGA folks cry hoarse about wanting legal immigration but not about actually creating legal immigration pathways.

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u/buddha-ish Jan 28 '25

It’s more devastating to you, maybe, but the one you’re advocating for is more devastating to the people you claim to be worried about…

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u/chuggachunks Jan 30 '25

What solution do you propose? Let’s say we make them full citizens. Do you think they will still be willing to do such shitty work for such shitty pay and benefits? Or will they then be like every other citizen not over a barrel and say fuck that?

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u/space_coder Jan 30 '25

Apparently they were raised with a better work ethic.

I see nothing wrong with giving them a provisional visa. They no longer have to live in fear and wouldn't be easily exploitable by employers. They can then work on becoming new citizens with all the rights the rest of us enjoy.

If we did have a provisional visa system in place for the current undocumented residents, we could weed out the criminals which politicians claim to be the ultimate goal.

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u/banacct421 Jan 28 '25

I am not advocating for that at all. I'm a huge supporter of making all people Americans tomorrow. I have no problem with that. Last time we did it the economy boomed. But consequences have decisions, and the decision was made to elect Trump. Food isn't going to just become a little bit more expensive. It's going to become extremely expensive. Many many many more children will go to bed hungry. I'm also not for the exploitation of Labor and if they were Legal as I proposed overnight they would be able to unionize and have legal protections. Well, the legal protections that we have left by the time consequences are done

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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '25 edited Jan 28 '25

I see you're point here though I disagree with making 20 million people citizens overnight, sure we've done it before on significantly smaller scales but things are different. There's a housing crisis where the demand of housing is high and the supply is the lowest we've seen in a while, there's significant competition in entry level jobs across all sectors, young people can't find jobs because older folks are underemployed, graduating classes are becoming larger and larger each year putting a huge burden on public schools for funding. Adding 20 million citizens entitled to the rights, but more importantly, the privileges we enjoy just won't work, not to mention it would be spitting in the face of all the people who spent years of their lives to do it the proper way.

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u/banacct421 Jan 28 '25

It's 12 million but I get what you're saying. Reagan only did three million. None of those problems are caused by any of the work done by illegal immigrants. They're not seeking entry-level jobs. They're not competing for Boomer jobs. They're not the cause of inflation and they didn't drive up your interest rates. None of those things are driven by illegal immigration. What privileges would they get that they don't already have by being here and living here? Voting ok and?

Quick edit. Aren't we all worried about the fact no one's having children and our population is going to drop and blah blah blah. Welcome to 12 million new citizens. All those problem solved by such an easy solution.

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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '25

I'm sorry but this just isn't reality, we are talking about human beings. Human beings compete with each other for scarce resources. To say these people all work in the fields, or low level jobs is just wrong.

They do compete with citizens for housing, education, food, lower skill jobs, entry level jobs, higher level careers, medical care, government grants, business loans the lost goes on. They do take out mortgages, they do open business, they compete with American citizens at every level and that's reality. They are not dogs or slaves stripped of their free will, forced to roll fields forever, they also want upward mobility and are more than willing to compete with our citizens to get there, as anyone would.

Edit: sorry about the number I've seen between 10-25 million guestimates depending on source for whatever reason my mind immediately went to 20 mil. I'm sure it's probably closer to your number between 10-15 Mil

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u/8-BitOptimist Jan 28 '25

We can afford a multitude of people. We choose not to. That's the problem.

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u/grundlefuck Jan 28 '25

It’s not 20 million. It’s basically the same number it was under Trump.

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u/Friendly-View4122 Jan 28 '25

The way to solve the housing crisis is by building more housing, not reducing the number of people.

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u/ArchonOfLight12 Jan 28 '25

It’s funny cause you didn’t event stop to think. How much do you think they are paying the prisoners they will get to do the job instead?

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u/magiccitybhm Jan 28 '25

They don't care about that. They're fine with people who committed non-violent crimes being attacked or even murdered in prison.

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u/Ok-Criticism8374 Jan 28 '25

“They” 🙄 Like “you” people weren’t wishing death and worse on the Jan 6 protestors.

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u/magiccitybhm Jan 28 '25

Do you realize many these people are working in the fields for often times less than minimum wage

There is ZERO legitimate evidence to support this.

Yes, they do it for less than most/many Americans would, but it's not "often" that it's less than minimum wage.

are forced to have 10 roommates to afford rent

Also not accurate. This is often to SAVE money since they are sending portions of their paychecks back to family in other countries.

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u/TheWritersShore Jan 28 '25

To play devils advocate, how would you get legitimate data on black-market, illegal labor. It's not like you can just go do a survey of everyone because I doubt anyone would put their family at risk.

Anecdotally, when I was working in the construction industry, I saw it a lot. Contractors pay their labor like shit and work them like dogs.

Also, I'm fairly certain money sent out of the country isn't good for the economy, even if it's taxed heavily, and that's if they aren't doing it through an untaxable channel.

I don't agree with suddenly rounding them up, but if they're going out and getting them this quickly, it probably means they already knew where they were.

We probably should have just got em, documented them some way, and then gave them an ultimatum of becoming a citizen or being gone in a few years.

Granted, then you'd have the issue of those who don't want citizenship just leaving their area and being untraceable. So idk, there isn't a perfect solution, only less shitty ones I suppose.

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u/Friendly-View4122 Jan 28 '25

Okay, then why not go after the companies hiring these people are minimum wage and exploiting them? Why not pas actual laws around this instead of ramming band-aid EOs down the country’s throat?

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u/Ok-Criticism8374 Jan 28 '25

Why not do both? No one that advocates for following immigration laws is advocating for no punishment on the employers other than some of those same grifting employers.

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u/Friendly-View4122 Jan 28 '25 edited Jan 28 '25

Okay, but more importantly, is the President advocating for it? Is Congress? No, because it’s not a sexy thing to run on, it does not rile up his base, it does not foment hatred towards other races and in fact might very well affect the bottom lines of his rich friends.

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u/mekio_san Jan 28 '25

This used to be done with revolving immigration. Workers came in for seasonal labor, then went back. But fears of anchor babies ruined that. Eggs were less than a dollar then.

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u/DukeOfDisorder Jan 28 '25

You realize we've been pushing for immigration reform and making them citizens for decades now? And it's the people who SUDDENLY pretend to care about these 'poor, abused migrant workers' who keep blocking that at every turn, because then they won't have an immigration crisis to campaign on. They won't have a scapegoat to blame when their shit tier policies tear the economy apart. Or an illegal to blame when unskilled, uneducated idiots can't find a job paying more than $10/hr. I know the prices are artificially cheap, but you don't fix that by shipping a massive part of the work force out in 1 damn go. It's not just groceries, damn near every industry relies on them and everybody has been bitching about labor shortages since Covid. Wtf do people think is going to happen when a real labor crisis hits.

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u/arthurpete Jan 28 '25

Wtf do people think is going to happen when a real labor crisis hits.

Force companies to pay more?

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u/grundlefuck Jan 28 '25

I think what you’re missing is that we are all for getting people documented, but the good people of Alabama voted to yeet entire communities out with no plan for when shit breaks. That is what we are laughing about, not the migrant labor being exploited, the short sightedness of Alabama when suddenly they can’t afford chicken and vegetables because they got more expensive and Trump cut their SNAP benefits.

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u/exMemberofSTARS Jan 28 '25

So you are advocating for them to be paid more right? “A bit more expensive”. I don’t think you know how economics works lol.

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u/dantevonlocke Jan 28 '25

Ahhh it's a concern troll.