As a poor Mexican from Arizona who went to MIT, this story hits close to home. But after much reflection, I believe the sad reality has a enduring positive legacy which has only begun.
While perhaps not following the paradigm of success we on HN often consider, the team's victory in the competition and subsequent publicity became a widely distributed step-function for an entire generation of down trodden Latinos. Although anecdotal, I've witnessed a large swath of family and friends become engineers, go to med school or start their own business. This viable reality was made possible by the previous generation taking chances and working incredibly hard.
I admit that I've been envious in the past of my immigrant friends with parents who are from India, China and Korea, where studiousness and achievement are default conditions for upbringing. But I'm excited to see an inflection point in the Mexican culture and it starts with stories like these!
It's harder for unskilled labor to emigrate across the Pacific. I knew plenty of underachievers in Beijing.
Most of the hispanic people I met through school or work were recent immigrants from upperclass families. However, one of my Columbian classmates at MIT grad school was the son of a janitor. He founded a startup after graduation. If we calculated a ratio for achievement vs our parents' occupations then he has one of the highest scores.
This demonstrates a tragedy that happens all too often. How many talented people out there have their talents wasted because of barriers like this. How many people can't fulfil their potential because they're born into a poor family or on the wrong side of an arbitrary border?
Sometimes a border is not a border, it is scar. An ethnic group was already living in that area and one day they find themselves at one side of the fence.
You are actually right, historically speaking. After the United States victory in the Mexican-American War, there was a movement to annex all of Mexico.[1] The decision to not do so was based on racial concerns. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina who opposed the annexation of Mexico, made this speech to Congress:
We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race....
You are very right, especially places like colonial Africa. However in the context of California, Arizona, etc much of the immigration is from Guatemala, Central America, etc, not the true native tribes like the Chumash, Luiseño, et al who are still here.
Just pointing this out because "division" gets bandied about a lot inaccurately.
All to protect mafiosos who pretend to be organizing "unions" for the "workers" benefit (which is illogical if you think about it due to the Principle-Agent problem, and makes no sense economically- the bosses will cut deals best for the bosses, not for the union membership.)
Keeping talented people down is just a side effect.
The number of such people is probably many orders of magnitude fewer than the number of ordinary people who benefit from economic migration to the potential detriment of citizens already living in the country. Existing immigration policies reflect this fact.
I find it interesting that immigrants are blamed for this. Lets take the hypothetical situation of a baby boom. 5 years down the line our hypothetical city needs twice as many schools yet doesn't have them. Now do we blame the parents who had the babies or government that didn't build the schools. Or lets take another hypothetical example a certain part of the country gets a new factory and there's lots of internal migration of people coming to work in the new factory. Now this hypothetical location suddenly doesn't have enough hospital beds to cope. Do we blame the people that moved for the government that took all their income taxes yet failed to build a new hospital.
TL:DR Governments take taxes from immigrants but don't spend the money improving services then complain that immigrants are overloading services. Blame the government not the immigrants.
Yes. Extraordinary people are significantly less common than ordinary ones. Therefore, admitting large numbers of people indiscriminately will result in admitting significantly larger numbers of ordinary people. Perhaps I was wrong to say "many" orders of magnitude, but other than that I stand by the remark.
I was on a First Robotics Competition team in high school and interacted with Falcon Robotics, (Team 842), a few times. They're well regarded as one of the best and most gracious teams in the competition.
I don't know the specifics of the current reasoning or history that Arizona has with immigration but at a base level I'm pretty infuriated that these kids actually have the desire to do hard things that society needs and got thwarted. I know there are rules but how many potential new engineers (is there still a big shortage?) are we letting slip through the cracks?
Does "illegal" in this (immigration) context have a more subtle meaning in the USA?
When the article says he lost his place when voters pulled scholarship money from "people in the country illegally", I read that and think, well I'm not surprised - surely if the university is aware that somebody is in the country illegally then they have a duty to report it to the authorities, and certainly not offer them studentship - nevermind a scholarship?!
The US government is intentionally "schizophrenic." Immigration law is set by the Feds, driver's licenses are up to the states, and there's no particular reason those distinct entities have to align their views in their different areas of responsibility.
"No particular reason" except for an expectation that the outcome be sensible.
See, you can make the argument that "this is how it's organized" all you want, but when the outcomes don't make sense it just morphs into "why is it organized like this".
It's not really about blame though, surely, it's just about upholding the law.
The child of an illegal immigrant is there illegally, they're not to blame, but they're illegal residency surely shouldn't be supported.
An analogy might be distributing inheritance evenly, because "children shouldn't be blamed for what their parents did [and how much they made doing it]".
Some people might argue we should do that... but even they'd surely agree it's pretty extreme.
Just seems like a rather ambivalent relationship with immigration law to me. But hey, that's just my outsider's point of view!
>but they're illegal residency surely shouldn't be supported.
Then provide 0 medical services, CPS services, police services, or legal system services. If you have someone here illegally, especially a child, being targeted by a predator, it sucks. Really bad. But to offer them any services paid for by the American people is supporting their illegal residency.
I find that most people who push for the view of not supporting legal residency in cases such as school care or even medical care are still willing to do so when you talk about the illegal resident being the target of a predator. This makes me think that either they don't fully accept their own logic or that there is something else at play that they didn't expand upon.
Some people see the law as unjust and not their responsibility to uphold.
Kicking a person out of the only country they've ever known is pretty harsh when they've done nothing wrong. The inheritance analogy falls pretty flat for this. Consider instead if the law said that children of murderers must be imprisoned along with their parents. If you came across the child of a murderer who had yet to be apprehended, would you report them?
That is already there in the laws. Overstays under 18 years of age are not penalized when you subsequently try to legalize. Otherwise there is a 3-10 years ban which takes some legal effort to overcome. Furthermore to legalize one must qualify through job or family and this can be a tough barrier for many.
You usually don't need to be a citizen to go to school. Many college students come from other countries. Requirements for a scholarship need not mention citizenship.
Also, unless there's a law specifically against it, there's nothing to prevent colleges from admitting or giving scholarships to people who have broken laws. You generally have to go out of your way to find out what someone has done. A college that only accepted people who hadn't broken any laws wouldn't be admitting most high school students.
Excluding people doesn't happen automatically - you have to actually make an effort to do it.
Well, let's not bring the Nazis into it. If you're deporting people to Syria or Somalia or some other dangerous place (which they sometimes have no memory of), it's quite bad enough.
Legal terms (like "country of origin") are abstractions that often hide what that consequences of a decision actually are.
If we applied that to driving laws, people would revolt. As long as people have a reasonable expectation to not be directly impacted, they usually don't care.
I watched the documentary around a year ago and was really inspired by the team. It's sad to hear what happened to them to be honest. Such brilliant minds put to waste.
Possibly they were all better off though, after their win, than they would otherwise be. It's both heartbreaking and inspiring what became of them. Heartbreaking: that not even one became an engineer or had greater (Hollywood ending style) success. Inspiring: that they struggle hard and have some success against formidable odds. Also sad that the Phoenix school to this day has to scrounge for equipment and funds. Lots of players dropped the ball here, the Arizona state, companies, enterprises, MIT. MIT could have gotten immense goodwill by partnering up somehow with the Phoenix school. An off-site campus or something, anything really.
Often stories of this sort are used to advocate a more permissive immigration policy, particularly toward those from Mexico and South America who have entered the US illegally seeking economic opportunity.
Rational arguments seldom make their way into this discussion, if it can be called that.
On the one side we have the empathetic liberals, who in many cases ultimately wish to see the complete abolition of national borders and global inequality. Joining them are corporations, which want abundant labor in order to reduce the costs of employment.
On the other, we have low-skilled citizens, who don't wish to see their quality of life reduced by admitting large numbers of people willing to work for very little. Along with them are those concerned about the political and cultural consequences of admitting a massive, homogeneous, and very different group of people into their homeland. There are probably some racists among the group, though probably far fewer than the other side often claim.
Whichever side you find yourself on, I think the following must be admitted:
1) The ordinary citizen currently in the United States will likely experience a decline in quality of life as a result of a permissive immigration policy.
2) Massive economic migration to rich countries from poor ones is not a solution to the problem of global economic inequality or poverty.
3) Historical instances of immigration, colonialism, and invasion do not justify or necessitate permissive immigration policies in the present day.
Rational arguments seldom make their way into this discussion, if it can be called that.
On the one side we have the empathetic liberals...
It's a common misconception among conservatives that progressive policies are driven solely by emotion, out of compassion and empathy. In fact, progressive policies are pragmatic, driven by sound economics based on long experience. Policies like the minimum wage aren't in place solely to give poor working families more money; they are in place to prevent just the sort of economically destructive race to the bottom that you use as a rationale for limiting immigration. With a strongly enforced minimum wage, workers compete to deliver better service, not to get lower wages. This prevents the decline that you speculate accompanies permissive immigration. Progressive taxation policies are similarly pragmatic and economically sound---despite the knee-jerk emotional reaction conservatives have to taxation, no substantial correlation has ever been found between tax rates and economic growth.
>1) The ordinary citizen currently in the United States will likely experience a decline in quality of life as a result of a permissive immigration policy.
On what basis must this be "admitted"? You provide no rationale for it in the preceding paragraphs and then dump this line as if it should be obvious.
Ordinary people in the US benefit economically because of their citizenship. Many of these people possess few skills and would live in abject poverty doing the same work in other countries. Admitting large numbers of low-skilled workers increases the supply of laborers, with the result that competition for employment increases, and wages decline. Even with a minimum wage, the number of employment opportunities is reduced. Thus, ordinary citizens stand to experience a decline in their quality of life.
That's very simplistic analysis. The impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers, even low-skilled ones, is definitely not a settled question [1].
It's simplistic because of the format. Its intention is to explain the general line of reasoning to the person who asked for it, not provide an exhaustive analysis.
The article you've cited addresses immigration in general, not low-skill immigration by itself. This could support argument in favor of a selective immigration policy, not massive immigration of low-skill workers from developing countries.
I cannot recommend more Spare Parts by Joshua Davis (the book the movie is based on). It does a great job explaining the situation these kids live in. (How can a kid go to college when their parents are sick and working 4 jobs to make ends meet?)
The real heroes here are not just the kids, but the teachers that with a non existent budget created a safe space for these kids to thinker and to use their natural talents
The key here is that he is hiring himself, so as he is the employer (of himself), and the liability for hiring an undocumented worker falls on himself.
Anyone can create a Delaware C corporation, even people from other countries who have never been to the US. You do need to be a citizen however to create an LLC or an S corporation.
Sorry this is incorrect anyone can create an LLC and a S corporation no need to be a US Citizen, at least in most states, can you pin point a state that requires US citizenship?
You're probably right. I got this information from an NYSBDC advisor[1] that I met with while I was in college.
(I wanted to do a startup part-time, but that dream was shattered after I found out from my school's immigration advisor that working for myself was prohibited.)
S corporations are nearly identical to C corporations, except that they do not pay any corporate taxes. There are a bunch of qualifications for being an S corp (that ensures only small companies can be S corps): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_corporation#Qualification_fo...
An LLC (Limited Liability Company) is similar to an S corp in that it does not pay incomes taxes, but it is structured differently and is not a corporation. For a startup, I've heard it's more expensive to set up an LLC than an S corp.
This is mostly true, but you're confusing because there are two different levels: corporations are registered and regulated at the state level, of which LLC is one category. The IRS then categorizes registered corporations as either S-corps or C-corps for the purpose of federal taxes. There's not a one-to-one mapping between the two levels, especially since there's 50 different states, but usually LLCs implies S corp.
In addition to @akjj's reply, I also want to point out that it's not entirely true to say that S-Corps/LLCs do not pay taxes. The short version is that a C corp pays taxes a corporate level and individual employees pay taxes on their income, where in an S corp the profits of the business must be either dispersed to the shareholders/owners or reinvested in the business, any profits which are dispersed are taxed as normal income rather than capital gains like dividends would be in a C corp, so depending on the relative size, an S-corp effectively pays a higher tax rate than a C-corp, just obfuscated through its owners.
The entirety of blame for all of this pain, loss, and suffering falls squarely on the Republicans who oppose immigration reform, and keep calling for the merciless deportation of everyone including children who overstayed their visas or came over the border.
If I go to another country and overstay my welcome, I end up in trouble. There's a 90 day visa limit in a few countries in Central America, for example. I once had to go to Mexico for a day to reset my visa. What a hassle; one painful bus ride! Everyone else can apply for a temporary visa then simply permanently stay?
The Republicans did give amnesty to 3 million illegals:
What should be done? A amnesty for existing illegal immigrants? Having an open border? Do you thing this will result in an influx of economic migrants as it is happening in the EU?
I think there are two issues there. One, the immigration rules. Two, the enforcement of those rules.
On the second, I have little sympathy for the category of people who intentionally break a law and then cry foul when that is discovered and addressed.
>On the second, I have little sympathy for the category of people who intentionally break a law and then cry foul when that is discovered and addressed.
So homosexuals put in prison because homosexuality is illegal in places (including the US not even 20 years ago)... no sympathy for them? OR... do you think not all laws are equal and that there are bad laws?
There are absolutely bad laws. There are also unconstitutional laws. I have no support for the latter, of course.
For bad but constitutional laws, we have a process for challenging and changing them. While they're in effect, I believe that if you're going to break them publicly, you should not expect to escape consequences.
Back when the U.S. constitution was written, visas did not exists, and getting permission to immigrate was uncommon. You could literally walk into most countries without any papers. As such, the enumerated powers of Congress actually only contains the power "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 4). Nothing about restricting immigration.
The US did not regulate immigration at all until the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882). The Act was challenged in the courts, and the SCOTUS ruled that Congress' power to "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" meant that it could also exclude people from entering the country – which is quite a stretch. For more, see: http://openborders.info/blog/immigration-
Popular opinion at the time was that Chinese and other Asian people were unfit to be part of American society, and the SCOTUS was willing to stretch the meaning of those words in the Constitution to grant Congress the new powers necessary to exclude them.
The problem is that a law is or is not constitutional based on numerous other factors such as popular opinion. The truth is that the SCOTUS is partially impacted by the will of the people at any given time (to say nothing of the entire issue of the political nature of the SCOTUS). Crying foul is one way to modify the will of the people. In some cases, what is constitutional is even explicitly tied to external factors (such as obscenity tests which in part depend upon current morals of the community).
There is no straw man. The person did not differentiate any laws, so I pulled up a set of laws that I guess them to at least consider making an example for.
If they did mean to create different laws they felt differently about, I left them an opening to do such in my last question.
You would have more sympathy if you understood how those rules actually worked.
There is no visa for unskilled people like the parents of the dreams in the movie. Even skilled people have a very hard time getting a US visa (more than any other country).
I don't think it is morally wrong for people to move another country seeking a better life, even if that country by a thin majority is unwelcoming of them (by making it impossible for them to immigrate legally).
If the law wasn't so selectively enforced and if the US weren't directly responsible for the political instability south of the border I'd have some sympathy for your view.
I was not. My kids are 4 and 6; they absolutely depend on me to make good choices on their behalf. I know that they will benefit from or suffer the consequences of many of my choices.
Yep. Isn't it great that these kids could compete in robotics competitions and work to support their families in relative safety instead of being stuck in a corrupt and dangerous country in which a drug war has torn apart civil society? Looks like their parents made a pretty rational choice!
Agreed. Their parents took significant risk and made a choice that, albeit illegal, worked out very well for their kids for a little over a decade. Well done and I hope that I'd have done the same for my family in analogous circumstances.
That doesn't mean that, once discovered, the kids are entitled to residency or citizenship.
Suppose you made a mistake... say you were messing around with your phone while driving and ran over a family. Would you find it reasonable that your kids be prosecuted for your crime because they were in the back seat of your car? Because that's what's happening here.
That's not what's happening here (IMO). What is closer to happening is whether my kids should suffer the economic and loss of parenthood if I were sued civilly or incarcerated as a result of that incident. They would so suffer and that is proper.
The young adults in question were born as non-US citizens and immigrated illegally (stipulated/agreed that this was not by their choice) to the US. Many years later, this is discovered. Now, the question is, "what to do about it?"
None of the above facts support a claim to US citizenship nor US permanent residency under the current immigration laws (as I understand them).
Whether it should is a different question. I _am_ in favor of a thoughtfully designed amnesty program for people who have lived peaceably and productively in our country for some extended period of time. I am also in favor of thoughtfully designed immigration program for people likely to live peaceably and productively in our country.
A key element to my support is that these policies be thoughtfully designed by experts (ie. not by me, and not in an internet chat room) and that it be enforced (in both directions) when violations or qualifications are discovered. I believe there are some natural limits to how many people we want in the United States, and as one of the preferred nations (as measured by net immigration), we do need some policies, ie: open borders are not the default option.
Because I believe in the sovereignty of nations and in the stability that the rule of law gives to a free society.
I'm entirely open for reconsidering (and am nowhere near an expert on) the first point (what our immigration policies are/ought to be).
I'm fairly unwavering on the second. When someone says, "ah, screw it, I don't like that law, so I'm not going to follow it," they put themselves at peril of being discovered and prosecuted.
> When someone says, "ah, screw it, I don't like that law, so I'm not going to follow it," ...
Yes, I am Mexican and I agree 100% with you.
So, I would be extremelly happy to see that every time an illegal Mexican immigrant was caught in the US, before throwing him/her to the other side of the fence, and investigation was open to persecute and file criminal charges to every American national that said "screw it, I dont like that law" and gave an illegal job (at below-market wages) to the illegal immigrant.
I would be even more happy if other American nationials that were deprived by those illegal practices of honest livelihoods would start class-action civil lawsuits against the fat cats that lined their pockets with the sweat and blood of "wetback" labor. That would make my day!
But, you know... here in the real world, I would settle for you, sokoloff, to admit that whatever stability that those particular rules provide to American society is derived more from the discretionality to apply the same laws to some class of people but not to others. There is an old joke about democracy being 3 wolves and 1 sheep voting on what's for dinner tonight. I don't think that is precisely the case here, but there's a kernel of truth hidden there as well.
Uneven prosecution is a real problem. I think if we decided to strictly prosecute every transgression, we'd either end up in a police state or in a state where people rejected and amended dumb laws. I'm not sure which center of gravity is stronger.
On your last paragraph, I do admit to parts of that (not necessarily whether it's more than 50%, but otherwise I agree), and that selective prosecution is a good thing in some areas (no sense ticketing someone for 56 in a 55 on a clear, dry, sunny day with light traffic). See also my last comment at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11103596
>I think if we decided to strictly prosecute every transgression, we'd either end up in a police state or in a state where people rejected and amended dumb laws. I'm not sure which center of gravity is stronger.
So aren't we already in an unfair anarchic system, so what then is the problem when people cry foul that the system violates its own principles to give benefit to those least needing aid while strictly enforcing itself on those who most need help?
I was not talking about littering, jaywalking, or traffic tickets. I was talking about the economic warfare that the American moneyed class is waging to the American working class; and one of which's fronts is illegal immigration.
It saddens me how blue collar Americans can get so incensed at "Juan, the wetback", but never stop one minute to think that the one who is screwing them both is "Johnny 'Honest J' Howell".
What do you think about the laws that were passed in the Jim Crow era? Suppose the United States had Jim Crow -esque laws at the federal law, would you support them because of "the stability that the rule of law gives to a free society"?
As you've said say you are not an expert on immigration rules; I can give you a super-quick summary: in 1965, they changed the law to allow non-Europeans to immigrate. But they made it so extremely restrictive that practically no one could immigrate legally. Their objective was to ensure the ethnic composition ("whiteness") of the United States didn't change significantly. Which is why I don't see a family coming here seeking a better life as morally wrong.
I think a lot of the marijuana and peyote drug policies were also "fear of non-whites" driven. It's a real thing; I agree.
To answer your specific Jim Crow law question, prior to the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendment, yes, I would support those chartered with the enforcement of those laws while seeking to change the law at the legislative level. (These are morally repugnant laws to be clear; the choice is between an orderly society with some bad consequences, or an anarchic society with different bad consequences. I choose order.)
After the 14th Amendment, those laws are unconstitutional, and I do not support the enforcement of unconstitutional laws.
Those states who had Jim Crow laws or even plantation owners who bought and sold humans; I can't understand it and can't support it, but it clearly was the majority point of view at that time and place.
This issue is running up against the fundamental challenge of democratic society: how to have a government that expresses and supports the will of the majority of its citizens without unduly restricting the freedom of those citizens who find themselves in the minority.
I would've willfully and knowingly violated the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, if I'd lived in the 1800s US.
I would have helped slaves escape from slave states into free states, and would have harbored them in my home (and whatever property I owned) in total defiance and violation of the law. And I would've been willing to go to jail for it.
I don't anticipate any of you to change each other's minds, but it's interesting to see how you've both built up the world on different principles (sokoloff believing that right and wrong is defined by law and you believing that laws may not reflect morality, and if I might guess, sokoloff seems to be a relativist and you an absolutist)
> (These are morally repugnant laws to be clear; the choice is between an orderly society with some bad consequences, or an anarchic society with different bad consequences. I choose order.)
Why not a little of column A and a little of column B?
>I can't understand it and can't support it
Most people economically support slavery, albeit through a few layers of companies supplying companies. In the last 24 hours I ate a piece of chocolate from Nestle which I paid for, thus adding to demand that goes all the way back to child slaves harvesting chocolate.
Rule of law in this country is already a joke; it only exists in the minds of the underclass. Constitutionality is also largely a joke and certainly not by any means a stamp of moral approval. Your hard stance on enforcement of said jokes just comes off as a complete lack of sympathy for real people and honestly perhaps a bit phony.
Yet another tragedy of regulation. Yes, I know unions want to keep competition for their services low, in the theory that they can extract higher wages. But the reality is, the people who want to come to america to work for companies are almost always going to have something that the existing people in america don't- either a willingness to do jobs that american's don't like or think are beneath them or skills that americans don't have in enough quantity.
Limiting immigration is limiting economic growth. The time when the country grew the fastest and most dramatically was also a time when shiploads of people were just showing up.
Every time you see someone saying "we need regulation for capitalism to work" these are their victims. Democrats and Republicans both have a history of denying people human rights, and the right to employ whomever I want-- without regard to where they were born-- in my business is a right that they are denying. It also denies the employee the right to work for whomever would like to hire them.
Government doesn't know best. This is why socialism has never worked.
So, if you're lamenting the way these people have been treated, look to your own voting history.
While perhaps not following the paradigm of success we on HN often consider, the team's victory in the competition and subsequent publicity became a widely distributed step-function for an entire generation of down trodden Latinos. Although anecdotal, I've witnessed a large swath of family and friends become engineers, go to med school or start their own business. This viable reality was made possible by the previous generation taking chances and working incredibly hard.
I admit that I've been envious in the past of my immigrant friends with parents who are from India, China and Korea, where studiousness and achievement are default conditions for upbringing. But I'm excited to see an inflection point in the Mexican culture and it starts with stories like these!