alt Hacker News> The idea that illegal immigrants need to be deported (and not have a path to legal residency) comes from a view that those jobs should go to American citizens (which will bring economic pain that is intolerable) or from a view that browns don't belong in the USA.
Doesn't the qualification of them being illegal immigrants imply that they aren't going through the legal processes immigrants should go through to get work and residency?
If illegal immigrants gain the same rights as legal immigrants, why even bother following the rules?
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The issue is that past administrations of given them quasi-legal status. You hop the border, claim 'asylum', then you get a court date years away.
So the first step is revoking the fraudulent claims, and processing the cases so they can be deported legally.
You have to prove you are actually verifying these things and our government has done a pretty bad job at it. We have at this point hundreds of incidents of legal residents and citizens caught in this fascist net.
As others have pointed out in the thread, those who slurp up the surplus value of the labor of these undocumented workers would hate to lose this leverage of "Oh you want the same rights American workers get? Don't want me making a phone call to my buddy over at the police department!"
The purpose of a system is what it does.