It is a sad day when the NYT is less deceptive than National Review.

— Niketas Choniates

As I said above, NR is part of Conservative Inc. but they do still sometimes publish useful and relevant information For example (though this was back in 2017):

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/republicans-establishment-libertarians-paul-ryan-scott-walker-business-interests-immigration/

The author correctly observes that MAGA knows big business is their enemy, but he notes another problem, specifically that a lot of the preferred agenda of small business, storeowners and farmers and small businessmen, is also toxic on election day. It was true in 2017 and it’s true now.

Microsoft has recently laid off a number of workers, and this was one executive’s suggestion to them:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/microsoft-boss-offers-callous-advice-to-workers-who-d-just-been-fired-because-of-ai-advances/ar-AA1I99vT?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=DCTS&cvid=baccc316e4704f4a8ad80e2bce4c7c52&ei=22

“Use our ‘AI’ product to help find a new job after our ‘AI’ costs you your job!” more or less. Granted this is MSN, so it’s not an unbiased source, but that doesn’t change the fact that this kind of thinking leads toward guillotines in Central Park.

The TPS status dates from 1999 and Hurricane Mitch, which struck Central America in late October 1998. The move impacts some 55,000 refugees, mostly from Honduras, the nation hardest hit from the storm.

Two things are remarkable about the story. First, an extremely powerful hurricane (180 MPH winds,75 inches of rain) occurred in a previous century. Second, this “temporary status” has lingered on for more than a quarter century.

I’m sure some district judge somewhere will try to block the move, but how long is temporary?

Just for the people displaced by the hurricane. It’s just temporary. And it went on for 25 years.

It’s also similar to enforcement of speed limits, usually only after more than 10 mph over the limit.

The US could hire more agents and do more enforcement, which would increase the deportation rates and self-deportations. None know what the optimal rate is. It is absolutely possible to deport 90%+ of all illegals, but American voters might not be supporting that level. It’s clear that a big majority support more enforcement now. The OBBB has money for more agents, so we should see more enforcement and more deportations.

Then, too, more Americans working. The 60-70% Employment rate is more important than the unemployment rate, which is more widely reported. That current 62.9%, if it goes up, should track Trump popularity to a big extent.

The Reagan decision is from a different era, more pro-America. Not 12+ million illegals then either.

— Cicero

But the Reagan decision directly contributed to creating the 12+ million illegals being present. As I noted above, it was an early example of what amounted to a free amnesty. I think Reagan expected the enforcement to happen, but of course it never did, and given the Establishment Uniparty’s choice, it never will.

It is a sad day when the NYT is less deceptive than National Review.

— Niketas Choniates

Sad, but all too typical.

There’s a famous quote, or rather misquote, of Eric Hoffer that asserts that mass movements begin as sincere ideological efforts, gradually become businesses, and finally end as rackets. As I said, it’s a misquote, but it resonates because it fits patterns we’ve all seen, even if we didn’t consciously notice.

By 2015, ‘movement conservatism’ was at least in the last part of the business stage, transitioning into the racket stage. It had become ‘Conservative Inc.’ The conservative commentariat and think tanks and so on were vested in the status quo. That included NR.

Instead of the infamous ‘against Trump’ issue, NR could have chosen to do a split issue, a double-size one, with critics and supporters of Trump laying out thier cases. They could have maintained their old role as the conservative clearinghouse.

But Trump was an outsider and too much of a threat to the status quo, and so NR more or less self-destructed over him.

At least NR still exists, and still serves some limited useful purpose. Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard literally collapsed over Trump, their remnants becoming rather pathetic The Bulwark.

1) The author, Jason Richwine, has invented a term “administrative amnesty” and claims this is what Trump is doing. But this is not the Reagan-style “amnesty”. He is deliberately using an inflammatory word, like a progressive saying “cultural genocide”. He then goes on to just say “amnesty” and the headline says “mass amnesty”: fallacy of equivocation. From Richwine:

DHS recently decided it would not conduct worksite investigations or operations on the agriculture, restaurant, and hotel industries.

The new policy is a form of “administrative amnesty” for illegal workers in those industries. As with any amnesty, the recipients are allowed to remain in the U.S. for now. However, their new status comes not from Congress changing the law, but from the administration declaring it will not enforce the law against them.

2) I clicked through to its original source, the New York Times, which headlines it as a “pause”–i. e. something that is stopped but can be stated again, not an “amnesty”, which is a lie. What is described there is not “amnesty”, it is a shift in enforcement priorities that can be changed at any time. It’s not an “declaration” from the government that these industries will never be touched. Since all the millions cannot be deported simultaneously obviously there has to be priority, and priorities can change at any time.

It is a sad day when the NYT is less deceptive than National Review.

The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.

“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.

The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any crime.

IIRC, Reagan’s amnesty was exactly that – more like a pardon after a trial.
He was promised certain legislative actions that never appeared.
That’s why Congress writes huge bills: all the rolled logs have to be tied together, because no one honors “word of mouth” promises.

— Aesop Fan

Precisely. Not only did the legislative promises not get done, neither did the enforcement provisions in the amnesty bill itself. This is why all the subsequent proposed comprehensive amnesties have foundered. The public knows that no matter how draconian the enforcement provisions are, once the legalization happens the enforcement will just be dropped.

As Limbaugh once described it, “It’s a spoonful of enforcement to make the amnesty go down.” Or words close to that.

Obviously it isn’t practical to deport every illegal who has been here for decades. But we need to deport a lot more than we have before we even start talking about amnesties. The entire Establishment is still desperately craving a return to ‘normalcy’, meaning open borders and the status quo of the last 30 years. We need to smash that idea down into rubble before we permit anything else. Otherwise, whatever ‘deal’ is made will end up being an unconditional amnesty and open borders in practice.

I’m not too worried about Trump’s amnesty talk, he’s done stuff like this before, both in his first term and in his second, only to get back on track fairly quickly. He’s been sort of like a gyroscope, he wobbles but returns to vertical.

5% of the population is something like 18 million people. If there’s 12 million people here illegally, or 20 million, probably most of them working–it’s pretty clear numerically there are American humans available in this country to work.

I humbly suggest that no immigrant workers are actually needed, illegal or otherwise. I grant that they are convenient to keep working-class wages and tech workers’ salaries suppressed, and they’re much easier to manage than Americans who don’t have to fear exposure or deportation, but I don’t think that’s good reasons to think they should be here.

Perhaps the “good ones” should use their work ethic and drive as well as money that they use to get here (since it costs many thousands of dollars to get here illegally or legally), and apply them to bettering their home countries.

If we need more immigrants, we should raise the quotas in the legal immigration system.

Exactly.

In the meantime, I’m OK with prioritizing criminals and getting to the peaceable unsubsidized paycheck earners last, by which time we may be in a national mood for a path to citizenship combined with a closed border and a larger immigration quota. No guarantees, but it’s a real possibility if conditions improve and spending goes down.

Illegals compete with the legally-employed for jobs and suppress wages. They don’t just work in the fields and wash dishes and clean hotels and work under the table–that’s outdated thinking from twenty plus years ago. Be plenty bad enough if still true, for low-income workers. Anyone who supports tariffs to make competition “more fair” should not at the same time support the importation of human beings to compete for American wages.

We’ve all heard about and probably resent when a company hires H1-Bs and forces their Americans to train them and then fires the Americans. I worked at one company did that several times. That behavior threatens middle-class people, and we get that, but perhaps we should spare a thought for working class Americans who also have to compete for their jobs.

I can see widespread ignorance about what the law actually is and what misconceptions people have about how immigration, legal and illegal actually works, and that ignorance is being actively exploited by those who wish to worsen the situation.

But folks are starting to learn, that you can be deported even if you have a green card, and that even legal immigrants are required not to be a public charge, and that even legal immigrants are required to have their papers on them at all times and produce them on demand, and that this has always been the law, and that marrying a US citizen does not magically exempt you from those laws. I see signs of it getting better.

That’s never, because it is not illegal to employ an illegal. The law requires that you may not ask for documents until AFTER the person is hired–so every employer who follows that law potentially employs illegals.

Illegals pass E-Verify all the time, and you can’t use E-Verify on someone who is not employed by you. The law simply does not say what you think it ought to say, and if it could be made to, we’d hardly need a draconian law, a simple and enforceable one would do.