Yves here. Many readers pointed out that going after employers of undocumented migrant workers would be a way to tackle one of the underlying objections to “illegals”: that these businesses are able to and do regularly pay them less than US workers would require as well as skirt OSHA regulations, since a worker without papers would not just risk his livelihood, but his ability to stay in the US if he complained. The classic example is meatpacking, which historically paid a large premium to other blue-collar positions due to it being physically demanding and risky.
But here, we see the Trump Administration targeting blue sanctuary cities, as promised, to challenge their efforts to protect migrant workers. And as we’ll see, rather than pursue abusive employers, ICE instead is pursuing one of the weakest groups, that of self employed streetcart vendors. Needless to say, unlike meatpackers, they don’t give to Congresscritters.
A knock-on effect may be increasing the extent of food deserts in big cities, since some of these streetcart vendors sell fresh fruit and vegetables.
By Haidee Chu. Originally published at THE CITY on January 30, 2025
Samy’s garage in Manhattan is usually empty in the afternoon, while the 30 food carts that park there are on city streets offering halal food, hot dogs, peanuts and Icees.
But that changed the week before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Most of the carts remain inside now as owners and workers, the vast majority of them undocumented, sacrifice their incomes rather than risk potential run-ins with law enforcement that could drag them into deportation proceedings.
“Some vendors we work with are in their homes behind locked doors now, too scared to leave,” said Samy, the 34-year-old garage owner and second-generation New York City vendor. The immigrant from Egypt is an American citizen, but asked to be identified only by his first name out of fears that his business would be targeted for immigration enforcement.
“We can’t just keep the door open like before anymore. We always keep the gate closed and installed cameras to check on who’s knocking,” he continued. “Everybody is expecting a raid at any moment now, and it’s terrifying for most of us.”
Trump last week deputized thousands of additional federal law enforcement officers to carry out his deportation agenda as part of a wave of executive actions and orders to remove immigrants who he’s said have made the United States “like a garbage can for the world.” Many migrant parents have said they’re keeping their kids out of city schools as the new administration removed long-standing guidance generally barring enforcement agents from “sensitive locations.”
The Trump Administration has said it’s targeting violent criminals, with Mayor Eric Adams stressing his support for those efforts.
NBC News, however, citing a “senior Trump official,” reported that just 52% of the 1,179 the people arrested by ICE on Sunday were considered “criminal arrests,” while the rest were offenders or people whose only criminal offense was crossing the border. That compares to 72% of ICE arrests last year under the Biden administration where the person had a criminal record.
In this tense climate, street vendors who spoke with THE CITY say they worry that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will target vending hot spots for deportation sweeps.
Policing of the city’s vendors was already on the rise before Eric Adams’ post-election embrace of Trump, who has openly flirted with the idea of pardoning the mayor facing a corruption trial beginning in April. The NYPD issued 1,504 criminal summonses to street vendors between January and September 2024 — surpassing the 1,244 it gave out in all of 2023, according to the latest department data.
The NYPD did not respond to THE CITY’s questions about why criminal ticketing has increased. A spokesperson stated that, pursuant to city and state sanctuary laws, members of the department “are not permitted to engage in civil immigration enforcement, assist in any manner with civil immigration enforcement, or allow any Department resources to be used in connection with civil immigration enforcement.”
“At the same time,” the spokesperson continued, “members of service will not take any action that will interfere with or impede civil immigration enforcement undertaken by federal authorities.”
Ninety-six percent of New York City’s estimated 23,000 vendors were born outside of the United States, according to a recent survey, where 57% of food vendors said they were either undocumented (27%) or preferred not to answer (30%).
While Adams last week told immigrants that “it’s imperative that you go to school, use the hospital services, use the police services,” he’s also supported a proposal to repeal parts of to New York’s sanctuary city protections barring most cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, warned that migrant arrivals could “destroy New York City” and refused to publicly criticize Trump.
Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the nonprofit Street Vendor Project, called on the City Council to pass new laws to protect vendors, including one to repeal criminal liability for street vending and another to lift the city’s cap on vending licenses.
“So many city leaders are saying ‘Trump is doing this, and Trump is doing that, how awful,’ but take a look at the mirror and see what the policies that exist in the city right now are allowing,” she said — just hours after escorting a street vendor with a deportation order to criminal court for an unlicensed vending ticket.
That vendor’s ticket was dismissed, Kaufman-Gutierrez said, but Yasmine Farhang, director of advocacy for the non-profit legal aid organization Immigrant Defense Project, said that “any arrest or ticket, even where a case is dismissed, can be used as a negative factor resulting in deportation,” or otherwise impact other immigration proceedings such as asylum claims.
’Very Scared’
“Oh my god, you know, I am very scared,” said Lola, a 45-year-old street vendor who sells seasonal accessories on Junction Boulevard in Corona, Queens.
The Cuenca, Ecuador, native, who asked to be identified only by her first name, came to New York with her children four years ago and is now facing a deportation proceeding she says is the result of missing immigration paperwork.
Her weekly income plunged to about $150 from $600 because she no longer works seven days a week to try to avoid getting a criminal ticket, like those many of her colleagues have received, in Adams’ “Operation Restore Roosevelt”enforcement campaign.
“I don’t receive any public assistance,” said Lola, whose husband makes around $900 a week as a construction worker. “I don’t come here to be a public nuisance.”
But with the fear that any encounter with law enforcement could accelerate her deportation, “I’m really concerned because I heard what usually happens with underage children is that they’re either given away or they’re separated from their families.”
Across the East River in Times Square, Abdul, an undocumented migrant from Egypt, works as a cook on a licensed Halal truck. Since the presidential election, he said, he’s received five criminal tickets from the police — once because he was not visibly wearing his permit around his neck at the start of the shift, and another time for failing to wear gloves during a break.
“The more criminal tickets I get, the more I have to go to criminal court, and the more I’m worried they’re gonna catch me,” he said in Arabic through an interpreter from the Street Vendor Project. “I have a family I live with here, I can’t afford to take that risk and be deported.”
Abdul, the sole breadwinner for his family, used to work as an accountant at a government agency in Egypt, he said, but moved to New York with his wife, four children and mother about five years ago hoping for a freer and more dignified life.
“Sometimes I regret coming here without knowing what it really would be like,” Abdul said as he talked about the two-bedroom basement apartment his family shares.
“My wife and my family would get really upset, because I always talked to them about the American Dream and how this is a country of immigrants and how everyone has rights and protections — but they would just keep pushing back, and they’d say that it looks like it’s not the case anymore.”
‘Even My Bodega Guy Is Nervous’
Samy, for his part, is concerned that his own family’s American Dream may be slowly slipping away before his eyes.
He was 10 when his family came to New York from Egypt in 2000, overstaying their tourist visas, he recalled. His father started working as a food vendor, and Samy followed suit when he was 18, first with a hot dog cart and later with halal food. He married at 24, and later became a U.S. citizen.
His family constructed their Manhattan garage themselves in 2017, after finally saving up enough money. They did much of the construction work themselves, side by side with workers who were themselves immigrants from Egypt and Mexico, “folks who look like me and my family,” he recalled.
There are no food trucks in the garage; it’s only large enough to house carts. With his vendors staying home now, Samy said, his income is down 80%.
“If things keep going at this rate for a couple of months and things don’t get better I might be forced to shut down and go out of business,” Samy said. “I’m gonna lose my business, my housing, and then we get in line for public assistance and shelter. I would be very desperate and all my family’s business that we’ve built for decades of hard work will vanish.”
Vending in New York City, he said, has never been as difficult and hostile in his memory than it is now.
“I got assaulted multiple times while I was working in the streets, faced violence before, but I’ve never been scared like this,” Samy said. “This level of fear and worry is something else. “The fear of losing everything is really something I’ve never thought I’d ever experience in this country.”
He’s far from the only one with that fear though, he said, as many vendors he knows worry that any minor infractions would put them at risk of deportation, or otherwise impact their asylum cases.
“I’m worried about everybody around me: relatives, friends, co-workers, my community and neighbors,” he said. “Even my bodega guy is nervous. Folks who I work with are nervous and stressed out about the future.”
Looking to that future, Samy asked: “if they target all immigrants, and snatch away immigrants and workers from everywhere, how this economy will survive? How businesses will stay open? How families will be supported and provided for?”
He answered his own question: “The whole economy of this city will be paralyzed. There’s no way there’s any logic in this!”
I’m sympathetic to their dilemma but seriously, why come to a country illegally, without going through the immigration process, start a business, have children…it’s crazy to me. None of these people are refugees or asylum seekers either, so it’s really hard to understand how they expect the law to just be ignored. As someone who’s been through the actual immigration process in the US and Europe, multiple times, including once for myself, I just don’t get it.
They rolled the dice and they shouldn’t be in the country.
I understand your point, but you are missing mine: these immigration crackdowns are being done so as to cause minimum harm to employers that use undocumented migrants to any degree. The reason a lot of people supported the tightening of restrictions on migrants was to increase worker bargaining power. Team Trump is devising ways to maximize tough guy appearances while not going after workplaces that hire illegal migrants in bulk. As a contact pointed out, if the Trump Administration really wanted force change, they’d raid one big hotel chain, like Marriott, which would cause changes across the entire industry. Nothing remotely like that is happening.
Sorry, I guess I missed your point being so wrapped up in my own experiences of the immigration maze. Duh.
You’re absolutely right. A decent immigration policy would target those who encourage and profit from from exploitation of illicit migration. Also, hands off Latin America.
You’re both right. I have lived in a foreign country as a “wet back”, undocumented person. It was difficult and always scary. I do feel for these people and their families. My only hope is (and maybe it’s hope against hope) that during and after this system works through the lower hanging fruit of the “people” it will move up into the corporations that are the true shakers and movers.
A small convenience store or restaurant losses out when a food cart sets itself in front of their door.
Food carts, on a different scale, are similar to how taxi companies collapsed with the advent of Uber. A taxi cab driver (in the day) could eek out a small living and a waitress could support themselves with work and tips – in the past. Tough choice that corporate and corrupt government control have given us.
Or target businesses like Trump’s which have a long history of using undocumented workers.
https://www.axios.com/2019/02/08/trump-organization-illegal-immigrants
The wheeled fruit cart stands in my town (which service mostly tourists at the beach) are employees of the cart owners. Whom, from my observation, are mostly US citizens. (They drop off the carts in the morning and pick them up at the end of the day.) What the pay arrangement is I do not know.
The issue of undocumented labor is a conundrum in my coastal CA town. Most of the hard manual labor in the City is performed by Hispanics (even those workers who are legally employed). The undocumented labor seems to affect the wages of these legal Hispanics more than anyone else.
The City is a historical Spanish enclave and current Hispanic labor has accumulated reasonable wealth (homes and business) over the years. These business owners speak fluent Spanish and can readily employ undocumented Spanish speakers. Many of the construction and landscape maintenance companies that do not have that language skill hire field supervisors that do. This gives them all a labor cost advantage, which makes for lower prices for the well-to-do (mostly caucasian) homeowners.
So assessing the winners and losers in this situation is not readily apparent.
Not hard at all. Law is “just ignored” all the time.
The problem is that is virtually impossible for the average person to immigrate into the U.S. unless they are skilled or have family here. A major reason people are desperate to emigrate to the U.S. often has to do with the destruction of their society and economy by this nation. GWOT, NAFTA, death squads, gratuitous sanctions.. As Malcom (and Grandma) said, “Chickens coming home to roost.”
“… often has to do with the destruction of their society and economy by this nation…”
VUCA American Style.
It’s EZ to take one for the (other?) team when your livelihood depends on it.
How would you know what conditions these people are fleeing?
The most basic level of compassion entails talking to someone to hear his/her story, including reasons for making certain choices and major life decisions, despite the challenges and risks involved. Stop depersonalizing and thinking and referring to them as “these people,” a strange “other” you cannot understand, instead of a complex human being with hopes, dreams, and needs just like everyone else. That’s without addressing the ultimate absurdity of political borders to begin with.
Pray please eleborate.
“… the ultimate absurdity of political borders”
Okay, you don’t sound entirely prepared to deal with reality.
Either that or you’ve inadvertently been born to immense wealth.
The immensely wealthy are the only other class of people who can afford to think borders shouldn’t matter – unless of course, they need states to be played off one another in a rapidly deteriorating race to the bottom of things, like labour rights, environmental issues, etc.
Did you not realize that ‘political borders’ might conceivably prevent you from inhaling carcinogens while you sleep or provide protections from your employer making you work the deep fryer for 12 hours straight?
This entire piece appears to be based on a single anonymous source quoted by NBC news which has shown itself to have a high level of political bias, even among the so-called legacy media.
A lot of political debates are complex and the potential costs and benefits are uncertain. Tariffs would be one example, tax policy another. But the short term impacts of mass immigration are quite clear. Employers benefit from lower labor costs and the upper classes benefit from reduced costs of personal services while working people are subject to increased competition for employment, housing, government services, etc.
It’s standard practice for political propagandists to try to advance their clients’ interests by shifting the focus to the ‘victims’ of reform. During the debates on the Dodd Frank banking reform legislation I sat in meetings of big bank lawyers where the focus was on identifying community banks, small businesses and other sympathetic groups who could be used as pawns to advance Wall Street’s agenda. This piece seems planted with the same ends in mind.
Did you get out of the wrong side of bed today? Your take abjectly misrepresents the post. It almost entirely consists of original reporting, with only one paragraph out of over 30 citing NBC, and that was in turn to cite data provided by the Trump Administration.
The author interviewed multiple sources, which is independent reporting. There are photographs (even more than we included above) of the workplaces of the interviewees all taken by THE CITY as well as quotes from them, as the article makes clear: ” street vendors who spoke with THE CITY”.
THE CITY contacted NYPD officials, cited NYPD data, and also NYC officials Mayor Adams, as well as “Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the nonprofit Street Vendor Project.”
As for your attack on THE CITY, I have read the paper for years. It’s grass roots and focuses on the interests of lower income residents, including things like how delivery apps rip off restaurants, the fight over AirBnB restrictions, changes in rent regulation laws and unionization efforts at Amazon for delivery workers, and the delivery worker wage theft suits against DoorDash.
Since when are these topics ones that “propagandists” would fund? Unionization, better delivery worker pay and curbs on AirBnB (for starters) are against the interests of the moneyed.
Wow. I’m thinking the announced (vague) 25% Trump Tariffs(tm) with our contiguous neighbors/ trade partners is bad news for everyone on either side of the line. Production will slow, jobs diminish, wages drop, consumer spending drop.
For what particular reason, I cannot fathom, other than some twisted thinking within the Crony class of ring-kissing bootlickers. Mother earth might get a brief reprieve, but that certainly is not on Trump’s mind.
I read that Trump may want to crash the economy his billionaire mates like bank bailouts. Trump can’t run again so maybe he longs for unlimited wealth and happy ever after at Mar a lago? Elon Musk is so odious…
Street vendors are one of my favorite features of NYC. For instance, on the NE corner of 109 th and BWay, and only on one day a week, an elderly lady offers three kinds of tamales. They are tasty and she enjoys a stable of regulars, usually selling out by noon.
I’m not the only one who enjoys the added color to the day to day grind. Around midday, office grunts and their bosses can all be found out on the street grabbing some Halal. And tourists love street vendors. This is evidenced by their concentration in touristy spots.
I don’t understand the math that spat out “prosecute them”, but I can sense that it’s an unholy formula.
I love the food from taco trucks (which we visit frequently). I’ve never gotten sick from eating at them, which is more than I can say for established legal restaurants.
I love the food from taco trucks, lol, we would get along.
I commend to all here Jean Merrill’s wonderful book The Pushcart War (1964). I must have read it a half-dozen times as a kid when we lived in Manhattan. The cover alone is a classic. From wiki:
–Jean Merrill’s The Pushcart War
Enjoy!
I was there when the Chicago Union Stockyards closed in 1971. When I come into town for a rare Sox game i park by Kelly’s Tavern, have a couple of beers, and walk a mile north to the park. No problems. The neighborhood looks better than when I left it, even though the mostly frame houses are the same, some going back to 1880s/90s. Same family names in church bulletin. The former stockyards property itself is a neat commercial / industrial park. The garbage incinerator to the north on Pershing Road was shut down decades ago. I used to walk to Goldblatts store, Chicago Public Library storefront branch and Peoples movie theater on the west side of the stockyards on Ashland “The Back Of The Yards”, but wouldn’t do that today; they’re all gone anyway. The Ramova Theater to the north on Halsted in Bridgeport is a reincarnated venue, Doerr was there in August. Street vendors back in the day were guys going to South Water Market where U of I Chicago is now and selling fruits and vegetables in the streets from their trucks, alas gone a long time ago.
I didn’t see in the article anywhere that ICE was targeting street vendors. It did say that the NYPD had apparently increased their citations of street vendors, but that was before Trump was elected. The article pointed out that probably 57% of street vendors are here in the US illegally. Well, sorry. You broke the law, should not be here, and I have little sympathy for you. There are many areas where I don’t agree with Trump and MAGA, but in this area I am 100% behind them. Every single illegal immigrant should be deported. Period.
I’m assuming you live in the US, from the tone of your post. If so, don’t complain when the cost of living goes through the roof and things you once took for granted vanish.
“We can’t abolish slavery. The price of cotton would go through the roof!”
Firstly, slavery wasn’t abolished by ‘The North’ it was no longer ‘practical’ post industrial revolution.
Secondly, the food sellers are there for a reason, a lot of people can’t afford to eat in restaurants or shop regularly enough to prepare their own fresh lunches.
Urdsama is likely to be correct, food inflation is about to go through the roof, that may be why Trump is bringing the army in to protect the elites from the ensuing carnage. I anticipate a lot of rioting or perhaps a revolution ‘French style.’
I think I understand the sentiment behind your declaration, but maybe try viewing through the lens marked “unintended results of burning our institutions to the ground”.
If you’re determined to ignore humanitarian reasoning, perhaps have a think about how immigrant culture and labor are enjoyed by Americans on an individual basis (that’s you! And the food you eat etc), as well as on a society wide basis (lower food costs, your neighbor’s yard is nicely manicured).
Further, are you not benefitting from the multinational choir of opinions offered right here on these pages? Might that translate to your physical world?
The “full-measure” solutions being bandied around by the current regime can only lead to yet another swing of the pendulum to the “full-measure” “solutions” advocated by the other side, a never ending fool’s errand that serves to perpetuate the great ideological divide we try to navigate.
Peace.
If that is the case then these individuals should not be marked “illegal” by our justice system. It sounds like you are arguing that they should not be illegal which sounds reasonable. However, that is a different argument then the one you are responding to. As long individuals are here illegally they are subject to abuse and underpay by their employers while simultaneously making it harder for legal citizens to demand safe and fair working conditions.
….safe and fair working conditions, your solution is to deport Illegal immigrant laborers. I would argue scrutinizing capital over labor makes more sense. We have “overlooked” the existence of “illegals” in our population as historical practice. It’s baked into our economy. I think a trip down regulatory lane is in order for the industries that have built this labor into their business models. One reason being there would be more control over the transition. But no, what we are seeing is the same bludgeoning as the CDC and EPA are receiving. (Who needs public health?)
We can dance around the framing of the question, but in the end, this is what we’re talking about.
You seem to really enjoy punching down.
Do you have the same outage over crimes committed by bankers and billionaires, and would you suggest similar heavy-handed federal enforcement?
I’m old enough to remember people like me being called Wops (as in, “without papers”), whether here “legally’ or not.
Enjoy your complacent self-righteousness while you can; one way or another, you might be next.
AIG should have been allowed to collapse with their synthetic derivatives…along with the winner of the other side of that sucker bet, Goldman Sachs. Let the house of crooked cards fall where they may. As usual, Uncle Buffy had next week’s newspaper the week before the bailouts. That’s the reason for the bailouts. Nothing to do with “subprime liar loans.” Take Highway AAA right over the cliff. The banksters were the ones lying all along. W and O were part of the theater. . Hank “tanks in the streets” Paulson and Geithner were the ones threatening insurrection- by their cronies.
Yeah who is going to pick your fruits and vegetables, pack your meats etc when that happens?
Who picked our fruits and vegetables before the rise of illegal immigration? And specifically, who packed our meats before government-fostered illegal immigration was used to break all the various meatpackers’ unions?
Perhaps Okies, a previous iteration of immigrant labor?
I suggest you read some US labor history from Knights to WW2. 120 years ago in California who picked fruits and all? What we would call ‘illegals’ now. Indians, Japanese, Mexicans (and native whites). In fact one of the most famous strikes was when immigrant Japanese aligned with Mexican…the IWW was even there. Jump to present…was the hugely popular Hormel 1970’s strike in Austin, MN busted by illegal scabs? No, by the company and the national, that de certified the local for being too radical. What was ‘operation wetback’? Well, I mean besides a massive betrayal. And of course, white immigrants, later under quotas were allowed to become ‘legal’ just by signing in at the gate, from mid 1880’s to 1920’s.
Who picked our fruits and vegetables before the rise of illegal immigration?
Guest workers under the US Bracero Program?
In Alabama, our white yardman as a child along with his family picked peaches.
Correct. The Bracero Program (1942-1964) was a US sponsored program to bring Mexican agriculture/construction workers to the US during the labor shortages of WWII and beyond. The Mexican workers endured considerable ethnic bias from Americans even then.
Here in Bavaria (Germany) a Metzger is going to be cutting your meat and making your sausage. Good Metzgers make a good living. Here you see white people picking fruits and vegetables that are locally grown but only in season. At least that puts to rest the argument by many American Times reading liberals that whites cannot do field work. There is growing influence of factory farming especially out of Egypt and North Africa and Spain using brown skinned labor but all that is highly automated. The Metzgers are under severe price competition from factory meat packers in Poland, the US and Brazil. We will import cheap food created by cheap labor or we can import the labor and make food in the US cheaply with cheap labor. The second choice means supporting a family is done by the US government to a large degree. Factory food production does not require the skill of a Metzger who has to complete a three year apprenticeship, take exams and get a license subject to continuing education in order to make sausage. Sadly my family owned a Metzgerei and the children and grandchildren did not continue the business. Too much work and not enough income. Overall it seems just importing the product without the labor and its overhead (families, health care, education) seems economically better. Of course, we now read in the Times that without more immigration the developed world will collapse. Does not make much sense but what does?
I cannot speak to much of this, but the reason for the rise in ticketing is an easy one. It brings in revenue. The city is upping citations everywhere, but particularly where they are probably going to just be paid. Legal or illegal both, street vendors are targets who are unlikely to fight the tickets, odds are they are going to pay. They don’t have the time to go to court and ignoring them could cause other problems.
You are accurately describing the parking ticket scam. As far as street vending goes, I’m not sure the volume is there to place revenue stream at the top of the list, although I will admit that it probably contributes somewhere in the action chain.
I really believe that all of the various departments that can write citations have been told to up their game. People are already being paid, what does writing a ticket really cost? Obviously if it starts involving court, the numbers will drop, but without that everything is essentially gravy. And ten thousand here, twenty thousand there does add up.
I am at the end of another smaller but lucrative ticket area. I work for a small building. Recently the sanitation rules changed so that buildings with nine units or less are required to use city designated bins rather than bagged garbage. Our management company representative told me that a large number of the buildings she oversees are getting hit with tickets despite having over nine units. Repeatedly. But it isn’t only that. Our super is really good about both our garbage and sidewalk cleaning, but we have gotten more in the last four months then the previous year. We pay someone to fight it, the fine is still more than their cost. Most of those court dates are still to come, but the first couple have happened, and the fines were thrown out. I fully expect that our tickets are going to slow or end. But not all small businesses and buildings getting sanitation fines are going to fight.
I will readily concede your first point. Never stray from “rice-bowl theory”.
I’m not surprised about the sanitation dept scam. Where I lived up til the pandemic began used to collect those tickets like candy, although they had it coming. They eliminated the on-site super.
They will never go after big businesses for using illegal labor. The Chamber of Commerce and the overlords of the Congresscritters would be all over them so fast. The administration may go after sone restaurants, but they are always going to punch down.
It’s been illegal by Federal law for companies and individuals to hire illegal immigrants, there is no enforcement against these companies. We all know why.
I think undocumented migrants who are making an honest living, not committing any crimes, have no criminal record should be given legal residency and be left alone.
Criminal low lives should be immediate jailed and then deported.
That all sounds well and good, but have you ever gotten residency in a foreign country? The very short version is it takes a lot of paperwork and a criminal background check. You need to provide addresses for the last 10 years or so.
The complexity is pretty high. Everyone I know who has gotten foreign residency hired a visa consultant or visa attorney. This costs money. Low income immigrants are unlikely to have it.
The rich frequently enact ‘pro-natalist’ policies, encouraging/tricking/forcing people to have more children than they can reasonably support. But if the people refuse to breed like cattle as demanded, the rich will over-rule the personal decisions of the people by importing the surplus population of other poorer nations, accomplishing the same end. “Migrant rights” is simply a code word for the utterly vile and amoral policy of the rich quite literally treating the working class like cattle, with the specific goal of driving wages and living standards down for the many, and rents and profits up for the few. Claims that mass immigration is due to humanitarian reasons should be rejected with outrage, even though we ourselves may be sympathetic to individual migrants.
There is not, there never has been, there never can be, a true labor ‘shortage.’ Labor is valuable, or it is not valuable, as simple as that. If the ability of the rich to force the population up via immigration is limited, there may indeed be temporary dislocations – a ‘buyer’s strike’ for labor – but eventually supply and demand will force the transfer of money from profits to labor. It always has.
Yes the west does bear responsibility for much of third-world poverty, but primarily I think from the toxic lies of Elon Musk et al. and their intellectual whores, that more people are ALWAYS better no matter the circumstance. There is no free choice without knowledge of the consequences. The third world has been plied with snake oil like micro-credits and market reforms and austerity etc., the better to allow all that lovely poverty to continue and grow. To paraphrase the late MIT economist Lester Thurow, the Iron Law of Development is that first people have fewer children than the physical maximum (however low or high that may be), and only then is it possible to slowly and patiently build up real per-capita physical wealth. There is a web of lies around this topic, but why do you think that China is about the only third world country to rise up out of subsistence level poverty?
This tormenting of little people on the bottom is just more kick down suck up performance
artistry by the oligarchy to keep a reckoning for the empire delayed.
If the empire focused more on quality of life in the various vassal states rather than seeing them as playgrounds for the deep state MIC, there might not be so many immigrants.
US foreign policy creates so many hellscapes in foreign countries and then we wonder why they come here.
Happens with every empire. Nothing gonna stop it, despite the kick down on these street vendors. Easy targets.
Nobody’s going to threaten the workers for the corporate home builders of Northern Virginia for sure.
I’ve shared this anecdote from the second Obama administration before but it bears repeating today: about 10 years ago the regional ICE chief counsel came to address a room full of about 100 Silicon Valley prosecutors to tout DHS’s record of deporting thousands of mostly low-level offenders from the local jails. After about half an hour of his puffery I could stand no more and raised my hand:
Jimmy Dore segment pertinent to illegal immigrant labor. utube, ~14+ minutes.
Immigrants Completely Abandon Job Sites As Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Begins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShBZxGrvVJs
one more from Dore, utube, ~20+ minutes.
Trump’s ICE Raids ALREADY Happening In Chicago & Boston!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9oODlqTYXs
Growing up in the US in the 1950s-60s there was a tv commercial each January reminding aliens to register at the post office. https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/postal-service-role-in-civil-defense.pdf
Once you lose the politically correct “undocumented immigrants” nomenclature and revert to the true legal term “illegal aliens” it is much clearer what the actual situation is in our country. No guilt. Just facts. They jumped the line to the detriment of all those who filed paperwork and waited. Previous administrations blurred the justification to jump the line by allowing economic migrants access and not true political refugees. Sorry your favorite food cart owner might be deported. Maybe the legal immigrant has a better shot at success at their business without competition from those here illegally.
Regarding detriments to those able to file the paperwork and wait:
07/18/2019: “During a key meeting of security officials on refugee admissions last week, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services representative who is closely aligned with White House immigration adviser Stephen Miller suggested setting a cap at zero, the people said. Homeland Security Department officials at the meeting later floated making the level anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000, according to one of the people…The possible move comes after the Trump administration cut refugee admissions by a third this year, to 30,000.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/18/trump-officials-refugee-zero-1603503
09/26/2019 : “President Trump has ordered that the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the U.S. in the coming year be cut nearly in half to 18,000, down from the administration’s previous refugee ceiling of 30,000. The limit represents the lowest number of refugees seeking protection from violence or political persecution allowed into the country since the modern refugee program was established in 1980.”
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/764839236/trump-administration-drastically-cuts-number-of-refugees-allowed-to-enter-the-u
Your link references an “alien enemy” process to register aliens of “specified countries” in the event of a declaration of war or national emergency during the Cold War. “Since [Post Office alien enemy forms] were introduced in 1963, there have been no national emergencies requiring their use.”
Isn’t that what is going on with Fentanyl streaming across our borders? Living in a border state with weekly announcements of drug stops.
A more measured approach from Australia to a similar, but nowhere near as large an “issue” as the US. Hope the White House listen to this interview, it is quite long, but well worth the listen.
https://josephnoelwalker.com/australian-policy-series-immigration/
Great read.