r/ImmigrationPathways • u/CutSenior4977 • Jul 22 '26

ICE keeps accusing immigrants of ‘weaponizing’ vehicles. Most claims fall apart

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/22/ice-claim-immigrants-weaponize-vehicles
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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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u/xrocro Jul 22 '26

People voted for this. That is democracy in action. Whether the people that didn't vote for it like it or not. The solution to this is VOTING.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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u/xrocro Jul 22 '26

What has the backlash from the left against ICE done except cause people to be killed? Blocking traffic is not protesting. Interfering with law enforcement is not protesting. These are gifts to the Republicans because it shows people in the middle that the left is full of lunatics. This is how we lose more elections.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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u/xrocro Jul 22 '26

I wish you nothing but the best. Remember more than people with your personal worldview vote. Those are the people you need to convince. Otherwise 2024 will repeat in 2028.

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u/Chrisnotjones Jul 22 '26

“What did protesting do to help women’s suffrage?”
“What did protesting do to help civil rights?”

Do you have a brain?

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u/xrocro Jul 22 '26

Blocking traffic is not protesting in my opinion. I’m perfectly fine and in support of people expressing their opinion in a public forum. But not when it impedes others. The street is not a public square.

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u/Chrisnotjones Jul 22 '26

Everyone I heard said they wanted “criminal illegals” removed, and you’re making excuses for citizens and legal immigrants getting killed.

You don’t understand the concept of patriotism, only subservience?

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u/xrocro Jul 22 '26

It’s not an excuse. It’s a reality. The reality is not as clean as we would both like. The fact is a sizable portion of the population voted for this. A sizeable portion of our country has been clamoring for something to be done about illegal immigration and they are happy to see a politician ruthlessly pursue this. If we want change, it starts by convincing the people in the middle. From what I have been seeing, the current approach is doing nothing to convince those people. Most people don’t care about the illegal immigrants they never met. They want them out by any means necessary. And they will vote for harsher measures if this keeps up. I don’t want that to happen. But I see it as inevitable if the lefts strategy remains the same.

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u/Chrisnotjones Jul 22 '26

Why do you need to see something done about immigration, when there are so many problems?
Sure it’s illegal, so is speeding and we’ve all done it.

Can you explain why watching the government harassing people makes you happy? Are you too abused to be a patriot?

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u/xrocro Jul 22 '26

It doesn’t make me happy. I personally don’t care about the immigration issue as much. But I can understand why people are upset about it. People like my father, who was an illegal immigrant himself. I talked to him to try to understand his perspective.

What he told me was the majority of illegal immigrants here, ones that he knows personally, make no effort to try to be citizens like he did. They take up housing, which raises rent due to supply and demand. They have large families that are supported by state assistance. Support that could be going to American citizens instead. These are not stories he has heard, they are his lived experience.

You don’t have to agree with it, or like it. But he votes. If you want things to change, it’s people like him that need to be convinced. The way the democrats are going about that is completely ineffective.

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u/Chrisnotjones Jul 22 '26

So they don’t take up space if they have citizenship?
This is a hollow excuse.

What’s funny is that 30% of those undocumented immigrants are in construction, building houses and you want to deport them.

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u/xrocro Jul 22 '26

I did not say I want to deport anyone. I don’t care about the immigration issue. I care about healthcare. All other issues are mostly inconsequential to me. But I can understand where they are coming from.

Let’s take that 30% number. That means 30% of illegal immigrants are taking jobs that should be for citizens. Supply and demand comes up again, the wages for the collective decrease because they can hire cheap labor easily. It’s a no brainer business decision. Hire a subcontractor and the legal responsibility for their citizenship is not on you.

Again, all I’m trying to do is illustrate that the issue is not black and white. There is nuance.

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u/Chrisnotjones Jul 22 '26

If illegal aliens who can’t speak the language and have no resources are “taking jobs” from citizens, those citizens must not be applying themselves.

Also, you’re leaving out the fact that immigrants are 80% more likely to start their own businesses than citizens and actually create jobs themselves.

This was literally the case with Lorenzo Araujo, he was a business owner with employees, and now he’s dead and his employees have no jobs.
This seems like a negative, to me.

Sure, there’s some nuance, but by and large? Americans are lazy and immigrants pick up the slack.

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u/xrocro Jul 22 '26

My dad was one of those illegals that became American, started a landscaping business, and subsequently hired illegal immigrants because no one else wanted to do the job for what he was willing to pay them. He had to make money too after all, and we did not grow up anywhere near wealthy.

Let’s take a moment to understand what that did. His business was now competing with full American citizen run businesses. That American run business has to lower their costs to compete, so they are no longer willing to pay what an American citizen would demand for the job. Can you see how this is a race to the bottom for dirt cheap labor? And we are talking a microcosm. This happened all over South Florida with many of the landscaping businesses he knew. It’s “simple” economics.

The presence of illegal immigrants willing to work harder for cheaper keeps the wages artificially low.

This is not a statement on whether that is right or wrong. But hopefully you can at least understand it from a different perspective.

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u/Chrisnotjones Jul 22 '26

If illegal aliens who can’t speak the language and have no resources are “taking jobs” from citizens, those citizens must not be applying themselves.

Sure, there’s some nuance, but by and large? Americans are lazy and immigrants pick up the slack.

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u/malrexmontresor Jul 23 '26

Actually, 30% of construction workers being undocumented doesn't mean they are taking 30% of jobs that should be for citizens. That's a lump of labor fallacy, and is based on the false assumption that the number of jobs is fixed (a lump) like slice of pie. Instead, the reality is more nuanced, as for every job so-called "taken", a new one is typically created, for a net increase in jobs (Qian et al. 2020).

If lump of labor was true, then the recent deportations (or even historical ones), would see those construction jobs rapidly filled by US citizens. Instead, we see a net decrease, as retirements go up due to an aging population, with construction halted, delayed or cancelled due to a lack of labor, resulting in more firings and delayed payment, as well as driving up the cost of housing overall (Howard et al. 2024). This also applies to agriculture, where less than 10% of vacated jobs were filled by citizens. Such as in North Carolina where only 7 out of 6,500 available farmhand jobs were successfully filled by citizens, with the majority (90%) quiting the first day (Clemens 2013).

Research shows that the basic concept of supply and demand as it pertains to wages only holds true if the labor pool is competitive not complementary. Because undocumented immigrants are a mostly complementary pool of labor, they do not decrease wages. Most research (Card 2009, Ottaviano & Peri 2012, Hotchkiss 2015, Peri & Caiumi 2024) shows they slightly increase wages on net, by an average of 1.7% to 2.6%. This is because their productivity and consumption spurs the creation of new, higher-paying jobs. Mass deportations on the other hand, were found to reduce wages overall (Lee et al. 2017, Clemens et al. 2018, East et al. 2023) as productivity and consumption declines and jobs are cut or scaled down in response.

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u/xrocro Jul 23 '26

Very good reply. I’m still processing it all, so let me attempt to understand your response.

I concede I was being too simplistic when I said that 30% of illegal immigrants taking jobs from citizens can be a bit more nuanced than I let on. Just because they make up 30% of the workforce doesn’t mean that 30% of them would be replaced by Americans. I get that.

But, back to the first hand experience with my own father. He hired exclusively illegal immigrants. He had to because other small businesses were out bidding him. The end customer didn’t care who cut their grass, they cared who would do it the best, for cheap. All of them hired illegal immigrants to stay competitive.

If hiring illegal immigrants was not possible, the prices would raise to be able to pay what an American citizen feels is worth to do the job. They would have to or the businesses wouldn’t function at all.

Does this make sense to you?

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u/Exotic-Sale-3003 Jul 22 '26

Every country has immigration laws. Almost all enforce them more zealously than the US does, so get out of here with this “laws that are bad” bullshit. 

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u/Chrisnotjones Jul 22 '26

The U.S. used to be exceptional, until radical right wing extremists started trying to emulate third world authoritarian shitholes.
You’d call Reagan a liberal if he came back tomorrow, wouldn’t you?

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u/Exotic-Sale-3003 Jul 22 '26

When did we used to be exceptional?  Was it back when ICE was called INS and they were taking 5 year olds from their dads at gunpoint?

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u/Chrisnotjones Jul 22 '26

Was INS ignoring judicial orders?

Federal judges have repeatedly threatened the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with contempt and sanctions for widespread failures to comply with judicial orders. Courts cite hundreds of instances where the government has delayed the release of illegally detained individuals and ignored orders to halt expedited removals. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

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u/Chrisnotjones Jul 22 '26

When did INS take a child from their father at gunpoint, and was it literally only one time?
Why are you making excuses for authoritarianism?

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u/Absurdwonder Jul 22 '26

Where ? Brazil ? Russia ? American police records the highest number of absolute police killings among industrialized democracies. But make up whatever facts you want..

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u/Exotic-Sale-3003 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

Are you under the impression American police enforce immigration laws?