Corporations rely on desperate, easily-exploited people in order to make obscene profits. There's no way in hell they'd risk actually cutting off their supply of slaves, or else they might have to drop a couple of percent of profits on paying wages / benefits / etc.

The border laws aren't intended to reduce the number of illegal immigrants, they're there to make those same people more desperate and therefore more profitable, while at the same time stoking the enthusiasm of morons who will continue to vote for more pro-corporate politicians who will shovel even more money to the shareholders.

Cruelty is the point, my friend. The sooner you realize that, the more sense it makes

A former friend of mine was heavy into the right wing and worked construction (surprising, I know). He was always complaining about "illegals taking jobs" and how he thought the work they did wasn't good anyway.

One day, I asked him: why doesn't your company stop hiring these people you hate? He said it's because then they wouldn't have enough people. Naturally, this is a contradiction. It didn't matter, of course. His whole personality was built on hating these people.

I think it is that way with a lot of folks. If we penalize employers (like we should, because, you know, the law), then these people can't hate as effectively. That means they might start voting differently.

You broke the code, I think.

More than once, the anti-immigrant people have succeeded a little too much, and actually gotten all the immigrants away from a given community / given state, and it's created a big catastrophe for the economy and there was a ton of pushback until they made the immigration policy back less strict again (usually, by looking the other way on the hiring side exactly as you pointed out, but still being strict on the coming-into-the-country side, since trying to enforce that side is a lot less effective and basically just accomplishes short-term cruelty without doing much in the long term to stop people from coming in the country).

Because corporations wielding the govt and media to turn the middle class against the lower class is an American past time.

how is penalizing employers going to hurt immigrants though? being cruel to poor people is the point.

Florida recently did just that with SB1718 and their agriculture sector paid a big hit. There is an H-2A visa system, but that is not filling the hole undocumented labor left. NPR Link

Somebody just joined FBI watchlist party!

I can say that the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants in NY work as day laborers and in kitchens. Cash under the table. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Of course that’s what they would do if they actually wanted to stop migrant workers from coming here. They don’t, obviously. No coincidence that the industries who hire the most undocumented migrant workers happen to be owned and staffed mainly by conservatives. Anti-immigrant rhetoric is used as a political tool because it fits the racism and nationalism of the conservative public, but the real goal is to marginalize immigrants so they will accept poor working conditions and can be more easily exploited. It’s the Republican dream - workers who will accept below minimum wage, be afraid to report employers to OSHA, no medical compensation for injuries, no overtime, fire at will, no unemployment. And then it also drives down wages and conditions for legal workers because they know the employer can hire immigrants for cheaper.

When republicans have tried to actually reduce immigrants by targeting employers, it hasn’t gone well for them. DeSantis did so and the big businesses in Florida were basically wtf, dude? Do you not understand this game?

It's geometry. It's less energy to enforce a boundary than a bounded area.

The big ocean is deadly enough. We don't really need deadly policies as well. I don't think many employers hire illegal immigrants from what I see.