Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
Make mine a double.

idea: add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random

meta: news, help, about, links, report a problem

account: browse anonymously, or get an account and write.

user:
pass:
register,


                                                           

Anti-Immigration Propaganda for the Modern Politician

Couch it in terms that a younger, more tech-oriented voter base will understand and view in the way you're going for.
 
(0)
  [vote for,
against]

Waves of illegal immigration are a DoS attack on the American economic infrastructure and job market.

The idea is a propaganda strategy for anti-immigration bills targeted at America's growing base of young voters. They don't seem to know what terms like 'depressed wages' mean (Wages don't have feelings, do they?). But every young, tech-savvy voter knows what a Denial-of-Service attack is.

21 Quest, Nov 17 2013

Waves within waves. http://www.youtube....watch?v=mcMP7eiKrSg
Muchas Gracias, [popbottle, Nov 17 2013]

Immigration and farm labor http://pubs.ext.vt....e_2_fbmu-10-11.html
[RayfordSteele, Nov 18 2013]

Do Americans want farm work? http://www.huffingt...mwork_n_740178.html
Frankly, no. [RayfordSteele, Nov 20 2013]

Here's the Bureau of Labor's actual estimate http://www.ers.usda...nd.aspx#legalstatus
Hovering around half. [RayfordSteele, Nov 20 2013]

Please log in.
If you're not logged in, you can see what this page looks like, but you will not be able to add anything.
Short name, e.g., Bob's Coffee
Destination URL. E.g., https://www.coffee.com/
Description (displayed with the short name and URL.)






       //Waves of illegal immigration
  

       Were those the 1629-ish ones, or were you thinking of something more contemporary?
not_morrison_rm, Nov 17 2013
  

       You feel overhwhelmed by the hoardes of other masses. You want little APC 21_Quests to live free in 'merica and start flame wars online for generations to come. Everyone has a rising, burning xenophobia deep down in there spermatozoons. You feel outgunned in a large scale Alamo holed up with little bitches who won't put up to the task of giving you seven, eight little ones because of some crazy ass ideas by some dumb ass feminists. You're out gunned in a fucking war, not a fighting war and you want to build a big wall to stop the cumming from coming. What are you gonna do? Post some little idea on the Internets? Or don't worry about it. There's enough 'merica to go around for everybody. So relax, and let the zerglings spawn. Get your bunker built early and stimpack some firebats, and you're all set for the long game of nukes and BCs.
rcarty, Nov 17 2013
  

       //Were those the 1629-ish ones, or were you thinking of something more contemporary?//
  

       We all know who needs to be kept out. It's those crack-smoking Canadians. Look at the Toronto mayor, he's clearly already eating his OWN people out of house and home. Therefore the next wave will undoubtedly be coming from the north as they flee their home into ours.
21 Quest, Nov 17 2013
  

       They'll be coming to your house, and taking food out of your refigerator.
  

       As for Canada, I live there and I don't give a shit about immigration. I don't care about future generations, or if the country exists tomorrow. I had a chance to see life, and it's just masses that when you look at it with a microscope has individual feelings and personalities and shit. Who cares about these masses. Once you die it's as good as gone, lack of perception of time results in instantaneous destruction and reformation of the universe until your rebirth. Don't worry about the big picture, just enjoy your own life and don't let masses stress you out.
rcarty, Nov 17 2013
  

       When the hoards of jobless Americans actually go start to compete with the immigrants for jobs in the fields picking apples, then I'll start to feel some sympathy.
RayfordSteele, Nov 18 2013
  

       I want some words with the folks hoarding them. They should stick to cats.
bungston, Nov 18 2013
  

       [bungs], have you ever tried to hoard cats ? It's a special talent, usually only possessed by mad little old ladies.
8th of 7, Nov 18 2013
  

       //When the hoards of jobless Americans actually go start to compete with the immigrants for jobs in the fields picking apples,//
  

       In every industry where illegal immigrant labor is prevalent, legal citizens hold the majority of jobs. It is not true that Americans won't do the work. American citizens (for the most part) simply won't do it for half the wage they are legally entitled to. A few years back, I took a job on a construction site in Richland, WA. I was doing grunt work, digging trenches for foundation footings and building/tearing down forms, right alongside 2 truckloads of Mexican migrant workers who were doing exactly the same job as me but getting paid half as much (I think I was getting something like 12.00 per hour compared to their 6.75). I was lucky that I got recruited by a good agency. There was another guy (legal American citizen) working alongside me as well for 9.75 per hour. When he found out how much I was getting, he confronted the foreman about it and they immediately raised his wage to equal mine. Illegal migrant workers can't do that. They complain, they get threatened with deportation. If accepting a sub-prevailing or a sub-minimum wage is what you call 'competing', they (legal citizens) shouldn't have to. It's easy for illegal immigrants to get by on pennies a day because they often have half a dozen earners living in squalid conditions under the same roof in neighborhoods where their very presence has (conveniently) depreciated property values and, accordingly, rent.
21 Quest, Nov 18 2013
  

       // half a dozen earners living in squalid conditions under the same roof in neighborhoods where their very presence has (conveniently) depreciated property values and, accordingly, rent. //
  

       That sounds uncannily like elected members of the House of Commons, with all of them claiming expenses ...
8th of 7, Nov 18 2013
  

       Estimates are that 60% of migrant farm workers are undocumented.
  

       Mississippi tried a hard line stance on migrant worker documentation. They paid the price because not enough Americans showed up to do the work.
RayfordSteele, Nov 18 2013
  

       Sounds to me like the major problem is exploitative employment, enabled by the lack of national ID and lax enforcement of basic labor standards. Seems like most "kids these days" are smart enough to understand that. It's a snap to fix this stuff, but when you live a plutocracy the law isn't written for the betterment of the populace, it's written for the sustenance of those with the money to have power.
  

       Welcome to the USA; if you are so smart why aren't you rich? Must be something wrong with you. Also, stop depressing my wages 21Q anyone willing to dig a ditch for minimum wage is undermining my small business which rents out tiny excavators which can dig a trench twice as fast, while burning super cheap $2.50/g off road diesel.
WcW, Nov 18 2013
  

       //not enough Americans showed up to do the work.//
  

       And what was the wage being offered for this work? If they were hoping Americans would show up to do the work for the same sub-standard wage as the migrants who just got run out for depressing the wages, it was an unrealistic expectation to begin with. Immigration crackdowns are supposed to increase wages, that's the whole point. American citizens (generally) go where the money is. But, you'll probably say, higher wages for farm workers will almost certainly translate to higher food prices. My response to that is simple: if Americans are getting paid higher wages, they can AFFORD slightly higher food prices.
  

       //Estimates are that 60% of migrant farm workers are undocumented.//
  

       Tentatively granted, but what percentage of all farm workers are migratory? I ask because most statistics *I* have read indicate that over 50% of all farm workers in the US are citizens or legal residents.
  

       Also, and this is largely a pedantic point, I'd like to point out that apples are generally picked in orchards, not in fields.
  

       To summarize my point: open, unchecked immigration is a Denial of Service attack on the American economy. It denies citizens jobs, and it denies them a fair wage for many of the jobs they get. It costs our government money (for hospital visits that never get paid for by the patients, for enforcement and litigation, for paying welfare to huge numbers of illegal immigrants using stolen identities and legal immigrants who came here for the welfare benefits being offered, as well as the cost of detention for illegal migrants going through removal proceedings), which in turn is passed onto poor and wealthy American citizens alike in the form of tax increases and government shutdowns which occur when politicians can't agree on how to implement such tax increases.
21 Quest, Nov 18 2013
  

       Rayford, from your own link: //Economist Phillip Martin estimated that about 1.2 million or 48% of the 2.5 million persons employed for wages on United States farms are undocumented.//
  

       48%, while a sizable minority, is still that: A minority. That figure means 52% of all farm workers (over half) are citizens or legal immigrants with laws in place to protect them from wage exploitation. "Won't show up" my arse.
  

       The fact, however, that nearly half of our farm workers are undocumented and therefore almost certainly working for substandard wages underscores the scope of the problem. That's 1.2 million jobs that unemployed Americans would happily take if a fair wage were being offered. That means 1.2 million citizens getting off welfare (or at least reducing their welfare consumption). That's a huge boon to our beleaguered tax budget.
21 Quest, Nov 18 2013
  

       Probably if they kept raising the wage, they would get a higher and higher quality of American worker. Eventually there would be a wage at which they could get people willing to reliably do almost anything, or actually anything.
  

       That reminds me of an apocryphal Churchill episode. Lets see if I can link it up.
bungston, Nov 18 2013
  

       Frankly I don't come to the bakery to have dogmatic political arguments. There are other venues for that.
RayfordSteele, Nov 19 2013
  

       Didn't intend to start an argument, the idea is simply for a marketing strategy.
21 Quest, Nov 19 2013
  

       //"lame"//
WcW, Nov 19 2013
  

       I love it when a post appears on the HB that some folks don't like, so those folks start throwing comments out that don't stand up to scrutiny, and then those folks suddenly decide this isn't the place for such an argument. It's like picking a fight with someone in a restaurant and, as soon as you get your nose bloodied, suddenly pointing out that the women and children in the restaurant shouldn't have to witness such violence. Funny how that didn't occur to you when you were the one throwing the punches.
  

       Frankly, Rayford, you shouldn't have made the comments you did if you didn't feel this is the place for such an argument. Nobody has yet to comment on the usefulness of the proposed idea.
21 Quest, Nov 19 2013
  

       interesting thoughts about sociology [+] evil [-] wouldn't work [-]
Voice, Nov 19 2013
  

       In what way is it evil?
21 Quest, Nov 19 2013
  

       Those jobs wouldn't be 'happily taken.' It's largely not the wage that's the problem. It's the nature of the work which is a big driving reason why most Americans won't take it.
  

       60%, 48%, they're all estimates and it simply depends on which study you look at.
  

       And yes, I stand behind my comment about not generally wanting to deal with politics here. We all know where we stand.
RayfordSteele, Nov 20 2013
  

       DoS implies deliberate attack by throwing "fake" requests at the target. Immigration is nothing like that. It is not deliberate attack. Immigration is also not fake. Immigrants don't pretend to work in the US, they genuinely want to be there. Immigrants also don't come with the intention of damaging the target. The idea is nonsense[-]
ixnaum, Nov 30 2013
  

       // Immigrants also don't come with the intention of damaging the target. //
  

       <Insensitive ironical comment in very poor taste>
  

       <polite cough> 9/11 ...
  

       </Insensitive ironical comment in very poor taste>
8th of 7, Nov 30 2013
  

       When they apply for welfare benefits using stolen SSNs, those are fake requests.When their government blatantly encourages them to come here, that is deliberate. When they send every penny they make back to their home country, that doesn't show a desire to he here.
21 Quest, Nov 30 2013
  

       As analogies go, immigration is to DoS what internet is to series of tubes. I think the comparison is too opaque for less tech savvy people and is too weakly parallel for more tech savvy people.
calum, Dec 01 2013
  


 

back: main index

business  computer  culture  fashion  food  halfbakery  home  other  product  public  science  sport  vehicle