Pandejos and the law of unintended consequences

Most of the readership will be familiar with the fact that California has a large population of "indocumentados" - immigrants of less-than-legal status, mostly from Central America, who supply a lot of the farming, factory and other close-or-below minimum wage labour. This has, historically, been encouraged by virtually every Californian politician in high office.

So you've brought in a large population of people who aren't that fluent with the language, actively avoid authority - police, INS, DMV etc. - and you've specifically told them that the rules, such as immigration law, don't apply to them. And now, there's a pandemic, and you want them to follow government-mandated rules on their business and personal lives.

How, dear reader, would you expect this to turn out?

Gustavo Arellano of the Los Angeles Times is in despair at the behaviour of the pandejos - a portmanteau of "pandemic" and the Hispanic pejorative "pendejo":

The earnestness and importance of the [COVID] messages don't matter: Everywhere I turn, my neighbors ignore the suggestions with gusto. Down the street are tents on front yards packed with people attending a birthday party. Over there is a taco truck where people chow down shoulder to shoulder, despite signs stating that all orders are to-go. Off in all directions, I hear music: live mariachi, conjunto norteño outfits, brass bands, and DJs, echoing from blocks away. Sometimes I can even catch the sermon of a Pentecostal minister who never bothered closing his storefront church to indoor service.

The combination of Gustavo's Puritan indignity at this behaviour, and his previous cheering-on of Latino extra-legal immigration (e.g. his relentless opposition to Proposition 187, is enough to make one wish for stronger bladder muscles. Gustavo has inadvertently cheered on a wipe-out of his favoured community's abuelos and abuelas:

In Los Angeles County, the Department of Health estimates that daily COVID-19 deaths among Latinos went from about 3.5 per 100,000 people in early November to 28 per 100,000 in January—an increase of almost 800 percent. In Ventura County, two zip codes in the city of Oxnard account for around 30 percent of all COVID-19 cases—and these spots just so happen to correspond with where farmworkers live and pick. In Orange County, Latinos make up 34 percent of the population but 44 percent of all cases and about 39 percent of deaths.

Why does California continue to have a high COVID infection and death rate? Because it imported a large underclass who never had to pay mind to government diktats, who live in crowded conditions that happily spread the virus, and who (though generally young and healthy) have brought in grandparents with diet-related comorbidities who are prime targets for COVID.

BBC shilling for illegal immigration AGAIN

I don't want to claim that this is a trend but they have recent history in this area.

Today Ms Taylor Kate Brown, DC-based BBC reporter temporarily reporting from Mancos CO, reports on the plight of Rosa Sabido who's sheltering from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in the local United Methodist Church who have decided to provide sanctuary to anyone breaking the law as long as it's just related to immigration. Anyone familiar with today's UMC will not be falling off their chairs in surprise.

I searched for the word "legal" in the article, and the only instance relevant to her actions was reported speech from an ICE spokesman:

She entered the country illegally and ignored multiple orders to depart

which, I note, nothing in the article tries to refute apart from a quote from Ms Sabido:

I've been trying all this time to become a citizen... I just tried to do the legal thing and in the end all I get was an order of deportation

The "legal thing" - presumably ignoring the (repeated?) deliberate illegal immigration into the USA which was the root cause of the pending procedures?

At least Ms Brown is honest about the motivation of Ms Sabido:

It is an extreme option and one that extracts a high and potentially lasting price.

Really? What "price" are we talking about? Presumably by Ms Sabido's calculations, it's worthwhile - what benefit might she be anticipating?

Rosa keeps busy but her time in the church is about waiting - waiting for a new Congress, waiting for a potential private bill, waiting for a different president.

Basically, a broad amnesty for people already in the US illegally. How nice to have a substantial fraction of a foreign government working directly for your benefit without any thought of payment - save, perhaps, a future vote in their direction?

However, I find the hints about the church itself of particular interest:

But sheltering Rosa was never the original plan. The church had spoken to a nearby organisation that believed there were a handful of families in the area at risk of deportation, all of whom had lived there for at least 10 years.
"They were our brothers and sisters," he says.
A few people left the church over the decision, but more have joined in support of Rosa, says Paschal.

Aha. I'm sure. So the pastor led the congregation into approving the sanctuary policy in support of a few people that they knew, but it turned out to be available to anyone in the neighborhood. Who knew?

Here's the church. Total congregation: 70. That means fewer than 30 people turning up regularly for services. In a town of 1500 with a total of 5 churches that doesn't look like a particularly successful church, and honestly I don't know how 30 people's contributions are funding a full-time pastor. One assumes that the United Methodist Church - or rather, their national congregational contributions - are covering the deficit. So the pastor doesn't have to have much local buy-in, he gets the $ from the mothership. Nice job, if you can get it.

Anyway, Ms Brown is officially no longer reporting for the BBC:

*clears throat* AHEM.

So, some ~personal news ~ (please forgive me, I haven't gotten to do Personal News Twitter. Ever.):

Today's my last day at @BBCNorthAmerica. I'm heading west for a new adventure, much of it TBD.

— Taylor Kate Brown (@taylorkatebrown) August 3, 2018

so this is presumably her swan-song. If she's moving out west in a career growth move, it's almost certainly to California so presumably this article is a final burnishing of pro-illegal-immigration credentials...

BBC shilling for illegal immigration

I shouldn't be surprised at the BBC any more, but their article My life trapped in an American city was so egregious that I feel it deserves a thorough fisking.

My family and I migrated to Phoenix, Arizona, when I was eight years old. I'm now 22 and a student of engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso.
I'm not a criminal yet in a way I'm treated like one.

Well, your parents arranged to violate the immigration laws of the country in which you find yourself, so it's not surprising that the way you could be treated is analogous to the way that others who have broken the laws are treated. And I can't help but notice that you're not blaming your parents for this situation despite the fact that they explicitly arranged for it to happen.

El Paso has checkpoints around it where immigration officers ask for your documents, documents I obviously don't have. I can't leave the city or I risk deportation. Fortunately, my parents became US residents two years ago but, unfortunately, this isn't the case for my sisters, aged 25 and 18, and me.
When they got their papers they moved back to Phoenix in search of more job opportunities after four years of living here. But I risked putting my college education in jeopardy and getting deported if I crossed the checkpoint and was asked for my documents.

I also wonder whether your parents' immigration status would be jeopardized if USCIS found out that they were actively working to conceal other illegal immigrants - you and your sisters, specifically.

My parents visit me once every three or four months - because of work and other things they can't be here more often. But since they all moved I haven't seen my youngest sister. Her high school graduation was last month and I was unable to go even though everyone in the family was there. And I know neither one of my sisters will be able to attend mine.

On the other hand, you get a gratis US taxpayer funded high school education, and I can't help but notice a complete lack of gratitude for this.

I try not to complain since I'm the first of my parents' children to go to college. I feel very lucky. On the other hand, there are days when I'm just tired of it.
I feel like I don't have rights.

Well, you have all the regular rights of anyone within the United States, citizen or otherwise, as enumerated in the Constitution - in fact, a heck of a lot more than in Mexico. What you mean is, you don't have the right to be treated like a legal resident of the country - because you aren't. That's like me visiting Paris and complaining that I don't have the right to be treated like a French citizen. I'm not a French citizen, there's no prospect of me becoming one, and just because I'm touring the Eiffel Tower doesn't give me any rights to that status.

When they ask me "Why aren't you working? or "Why don't you drive?" I have to make them believe that I'm lazy. So they just stop asking. The truth is I'm unable to work or get a driving licence.
As soon as we crossed the border I had to assimilate myself. I learned English and as I was learning it as a child, our teachers would straight out say "Stop speaking Spanish. You're in America now". A few months later I would win spelling bees - compete against white people who only spoke English - and still win.

You've done a great job of learning the language: fantastic! Just curious: what did you learn about the laws of the country you're living in, and the need to respect them? Because that's also kinda important.

After the 2008 recession my dad, a civil engineer, couldn't find a job in Phoenix and we lost the house we had. So we had to go back to Mexico.
I had such a terrible time, it was probably the worst of my life. I was so Americanised that I didn't fit in. That's what they ask you to do to be accepted in the American culture. I had lost my Mexican identity. We were there for a year and a half before we came back.

Looking at your age (22 now) this looks like: left Mexico at age 8, returned to Mexico at age 12, came back to USA at age 13/14. Pardon me for scenting a certain amount of license with the truth here. At age 8 you'd be speaking fluent Mexican Spanish. After 4 years in the USA you'll certainly have an American accent, but you'll be immersed in an immigrant community and frequently hearing and speaking Spanish. The problem is, you didn't like being back in Mexico because it wasn't as nice as being in the USA - even with all the illegal immigration limitations you document so heavily.

I know so much history about this country, more than average US nationals, and I have so much respect for it seeing as I get myself involved in politics to help improve this country's current state. I involve myself more than citizens, people who should worry more about this nation given that it really is theirs.

I see. So you don't think that, for instance, politics in the USA should be reserved for those who are actually citizens and bear voting rights and responsibilities? In fact, by the sound of it, you consider yourself better informed and more responsible than they are? I can't imagine that generating any resentment at all.

It's difficult to dream in a country that, regardless of everything I've done, which is what most immigrants do, doesn't welcome you even if you've seen it as home for most of your life.

I've found the USA very welcoming to immigrants. But then, I came here by following the rules that the USA had laid down for immigrants. Almost as if Americans don't appreciate those trying to end-run around the rules that others are following. Go figure.

I understand that they have the right to choose to whom they grant citizenship. I just wish they would give me some sort of help. I've given up part of my culture, my roots, to be accepted here. I've already given some of me.
Why can't this country give something back?

What, like a free high school education? A community which is so attractive that you'd rather live there illegally than in your home country legally? Legal status for your older sister and parents? Yes, you've really been hard done over by the USA.

Three semesters from now, when I graduate, I may still be deported. And I may never see my sisters again until they can get papers, which by the looks of it will probably be in 12 more years.

You should go and talk to Indian or Chinese H1-B visa holders and ask them about their timelime to permanent resident (Green Card) status. They'd love to only have to wait 12 years. If you want to see your sisters again, you can always go to Mexico after you graduate. What you're actually saying is that you prefer the economic and educational benefits of living in the USA to seeing your sisters. That's a perfectly rational choice, but it's your choice, and it's a bit much to blame the USA for the situation that you can't have your cake and eat it.

You can't deny that this has affected me. This shouldn't be happening.

Right. Your parents shouldn't have repeatedly violated US immigration law in the first place to put you in this invidious position. And yet that doesn't seem to be your point, for some reason...

Pull your head out of your ass, girl. If you really want to stay in the USA, find an American citizen and marry them. I assume that's how your older sister got her residence status. It may be a sacrifice - you might already be in love with someone who's not a USA citizen - but you have to decide what's most important to you.

You can't spell "POLICE" without "ICE"

The shameless pandering of open-borders mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland, CA has really been gripping my chaps. For a weapons-grade bit of trolling, and if I were particularly tired of life, I'd recommend walking the streets of Oakland with a T-shirt:

SUPPORT THE POLICE

Because, let's face it, you can't spell "POLICE" without "ICE".

neveragain.tech virtue signalling

In the past couple of days I've seen all manner of prompts to add my name to the petition at neveragain.tech, solemnly swearing to:

1. refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying information for the United States government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin.
2. advocate within our organizations:
• to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting.
• to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and national origin data.
to responsibly destroy high-risk datasets and backups.
• to implement security and privacy best practices, in particular, for end-to-end encryption to be the default wherever possible. to demand appropriate legal process should the government request that we turn over user data collected by our organization, even in small amounts.
3. if I discover misuse of data that I consider illegal or unethical in my organizations:
• I will work with our colleagues and leaders to correct it.
• If we cannot stop these practices, we will exercise our rights and responsibilities to speak out publicly and engage in responsible whistleblowing without endangering users.
• If we have the authority to do so, we will use all available legal defenses to stop these practices.
• If we do not have such authority, and our organizations force us to engage in such misuse, we will resign from our positions rather than comply.
4. raise awareness and ask critical questions about the responsible and fair use of data and algorithms beyond my organization and our industry.

The more perceptive readers will be surprised at how closely this declaration follows the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA, and wonder why - following the past 8 years of progressive weaponization of the Federal government - the tech industry has suddenly decided that unlimited government power is A Bad Thing to be strenuously resisted.

OK, maybe it's not much of a mystery.

Seriously though, one has to wonder why so many tecchies - who are, on average, very intelligent and somewhat resistant to regular bullshit - are signing this petition. The classic excuse comes from the role of IBM's equipment in the Holocaust, used by the Nazis to process the data around selection and slaughter of Jews in Europe. IBM itself acknowledges its role:

It has been known for decades that the Nazis used Hollerith equipment and that IBM's German subsidiary during the 1930s -- Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH (Dehomag) -- supplied Hollerith equipment. As with hundreds of foreign-owned companies that did business in Germany at that time, Dehomag came under the control of Nazi authorities prior to and during World War II. It is also widely known that Thomas J. Watson, Sr., received and subsequently repudiated and returned a medal presented to him by the German government for his role in global economic relations.

It's a bit unfair to single out IBM here. The premise is that equipment from an IBM-owned subsidiary was instrumental to the Nazis being able to kill Jews more efficiently. Nowadays, how would we feel if Syria's Bashar Assad used an Excel spreadsheet or two to organise slaughter of non-Alawite citizens? I'm fairly sure that Microsoft's Excel developers couldn't realistically be held accountable for this. Even if a Microsoft sales rep sold a 1000-seat Excel license to the Syrian regime, it would be a bit of a stretch to blame them for any resulting massacre. After all, the regime could always use OpenOffice for a free-as-in-beer-and-freedom solution to programmatic pogrom.

As you might expect from a Silicon Valley initiative, this is primarily intended as strenuous virtue-signalling. "Look at me, how right-thinking I am and how willing to prevent persecution of minorities!" Really though, it will have zero effect. The US Government does not contract out to random Silicon Valley firms for immigration and related database work. They have their own information systems for this, developed at horrific expense and timescales by the Beltway Bandit consulting firms and government IT workers. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services department isn't going to ask Twitter or a San Francisco start-up to develop a new immigrant tracking system - even though I suspect they'd get one with 10% of the downtime and 20% of the cost of the one that the Bandits will develop for them.

The most plausible concern of the signatories is the existing social graph and personally identifiable information in systems like Facebook and Twitter. Religion and national origin isn't stored systematically, and visa status isn't stored at all, but from analysis of posts and relationship activities I can imagine that you could fairly reliably infer areas of the relationship graph that are likely to be e.g. Guatemalan in origin and using Latin American Spanish as their primary language, working in low-wage industries, and physically located in Southern California (checking in from IPs known to be in LA and its environment). If you wanted to identify a pool of likely illegal immigrants, that would be a good place to start. Since Facebook already has this data, and sells access to parts of their information to advertisers, I wonder what these signatories are going to do about it?

$20 says "not a damn thing." They like their jobs and status too much. They won't find other companies as accepting of their social activism and public posturing. They won't take on new jobs targeting minorities, but then no-one sane is going to ask them to take on that kind of work because the D.C. consulting firms want the money instead and have lobbyists ensuring that they'll get it.

Silicon Valley in the Time of Trump

The past few days have given me a great view into how the famously liberal population of the Bay Area has taken the election of Donald Trump. "Not well" is fair, but a yuuuuge understatement.

Do you know what California's principal export is? Whine.

The Bay Area is probably the most pro-Clinton anti-Trump group outside the island of Manhattan, and the residents were never going to be entirely happy with a Trump victory. I predicted butthurt-ness, and was I ever right. However even I, with my jaundiced view of human nature, never expected the level of rage and opprobrium directed at Trump and his voting enablers. So far I've seen - not heard but actually seen written on group emails and forums - the following:

• claims of suicidal feelings, particularly from trans and gender-fluid folks;
• assertions that anyone voting for Trump needs to publicly denounce Trump's perceived opinions about Black Lives Matter, Hispanics, gays (wut?) and immigrants;
• statements that anyone voting for Trump needs to go work for another company;
• room-sized group hugs to support each other post-election; and
• claims that Trump and Pence wanted to electrocute people who were gay or trans.

Thank goodness Trump has elephant-thick skin, because there's probably enough libel in every Bay Area tech company's emails to pay for the building of another Trump Tower.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me was a bundle of complaints around the theme:

"I was hoping to teach my girls that, if you work hard and dream big, you can be anything you want to be. I would like to thank 2016 for putting me right."

It seems that a large number of people were going to use "Hillary as first woman president" as the totem for their children to show that the glass ceiling had been shattered. While I'm all in favour of showing children role models, is Hillary really the model you want to use?

I actually found it inspiring, in a way. The lesson I took from the election was that if you are a woman, even if you are a revolting and corrupt human being, you can make it to within a gnat's chuff of being the President of the United States, and your party organisation will happily screw over men to help you get its nomination. It wouldn't have taken much of a vote change in one or two swing states for Hillary to be elected, at which point I guarantee that no-one on the Dems side would be talking about upsetting the electoral college applecart.

Hillary is (of course) not happy and blames FBI Director Comey for her narrow defeat:

But our analysis is that [FBI Director James B.] Comey's letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum,” she said. “We dropped, and we had to keep really pushing ahead to regain our advantage — which going into the last weekend, we had."

She's right, of course. Comey's letter was quite possibly enough to cause Hillary voters in key states to stay home on polling day.

On the other hand, there were many other what-ifs, any one of which was probably enough to get her elected:

• what if she had actually achieved something of note as Secretary of State?
• what if she and Bill hadn't gone around the world soliciting hundreds of millions of dollars from various dubious countries and individuals?
• what if she were actually personally likeable?
• what if she'd not blown her chance to land a kill-shot on The Donald in the debates?
• what if she'd insisted that the DNC not put its thumb on the scales, and instead beat Bernie fairly in the nomination?

All these were in her control, so to blame solely Comey for her loss seems rather obtuse.

And on the flip side, what if Comey had taken the - apparently quite reasonable - step to indict her for her recklessness in running her own email server and exposing any amount of State classified material to any intelligence service worth its name? Isn't she grateful to him for not doing that, at least?

Toys firmly out of prams

I predicted a certain amount of tantrums, but really didn't think it would get this bad this quickly. Scotland and London wanting to split off and rejoin Europe, Labour Party stalwarts gunning for Corbyn (who, up until a couple of hours ago, must have thought he'd played a blinder) and Twitter and Facebook in meltdown with Remainers calling Leavers "racist idiots" and worse.

Heavens sake, you're all adults, bloody act like it. This was a full national referendum with a turnout of 74% which is way above recent elections. If your side lost, sit down and put up with it. Don't whine like a three year old deprived of an ice cream. Leave seem to have been a heck of a lot more restrained in their unexpected win than you'd have been in their place.

Not entirely surprised by Cameron chucking the towel in. He seems to be one of the few people today (and maybe the only Remainer) acting with dignity.

Referendum predictions

I have no idea on the actual result. I don't think I could place a bet if I was offered 50:50 odds on each choice. That said, the breakdown by region is going to be very interesting, and I wonder if the rain/floods will hit turnout in the SE, and whether that will make a material difference.

If "Remain" wins: The Guardian (and, less obviously, BBC) will be insufferable. Juncker et al will keep true to their promise not to give any concessions to the UK, even if the result is knife-edge. UKIP effectively dissolves in a frenzied pit of backbiting. Who knows what the UKIP voters will do at the next election?

If "Leave" wins: Immediate witch-hunt from Guardian, BBC. Cameron resigns. Panic in Europe. Stock markets burning. Sweden and maybe Denmark start feeling popular pressure to exit or form referendum. Juncker et al refuse any trade deals with the UK. Boris's hair a fixture on the international news.

I've observed my Facebook stream becoming increasingly stridently pro-Remain over the past 2 weeks. The Leavers are keeping very quiet, presumably because they're swamped by insufferable Remainers if they post anything. Remain posts seem to be relatively free of Leaver comments. So is this due to Remain having an insurmountable majority, due to me having a supermajority of Remain friends, or because the Leavers don't care what the Remainers think or do?

Going by their selection of stories and interviewees, the BBC have steadily abandoned impartiality over the past couple of weeks. The only really studiously neutral Beebite I've seen has been the indefatigueable Kuenssberg.

I'm starting to think that Trump might just pull this off...

Trump's political opponents seem hell-bent on getting him elected. Dixit Linus Torvalds, father of Linux and otherwise political moderate:

It used to be that the only thing that made Donald Trump look good was comparing him with the other Republican candidates. Because even a whiny five-year old megalomaniac looks positively stellar when compared to a religious nut who loves the death penalty.
Now, those other Republican candidates are gone. That should make for a saner baseline, no?
No.
These days, it's the anti-Trump protesters that make "the Donald" look good in comparison.
Christ, people. You're doing it wrong.

One can only assume that this is in reference to the sustained violence at the Trump rally in San Jose, CA last night which seemed to be perpetrated by a motley crew of students, Mexican nationalists and union-backed thugs and involved Trump supporters being pelted with eggs, sucker-punched, and clubbed on the side of the head. I watched the videos and it was indisputably appalling. The American Constitution has the First Amendment which guarantees the right to free speech; as P. J. O'Rourke remarked, it also implies the responsibility to live with the consequences. If you vocally support Trump because you hate people with brown skin, you're an asshat and the concomitant public opprobrium is your problem. But if you are physically attacked for supporting the Republican party candidate for President, then there are other laws which should come into play and they should be squarely aimed at - and enforced on - your attacker.

The Bay Area news organisations - with the commendable exception of KRON 4 were carefully keeping the lid on reports of the violence last night. Even CNN sat on it until reporting on the violence was unavoidable; even then, there were strenuous efforts to deflect the blame towards Trump. San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo's comments were particularly awful:

"Our police officers have done an extremely courageous and professional job so far," Liccardo told The Associated Press Thursday night. "At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign."

Yes, heaven forfend that a Presidential candidate actually speak clearly about his intentions to enforce the law of the land and secure a nation's borders. There are very reasonable arguments to be had about whether this is a good idea or not, but the implicit blaming of Trump for the actions of the protestors was disgraceful. Liccardo has the luxury of an electorate who would vote him in based on party affiliation even if it came out that he framed OJ, spied for China, and buggered raccoons on his free weekends, so the concept of trying to win an election based on popular policy is doubtless alien to him. His blatant repudiation of the First Amendment might well be related to metropolitan California's sustained attack on the Second Amendment, but neither does him any credit.

Faced with a Twitter firestorm, he tried to walk this back later on:

I condemn all acts of violence committed against people who exercise their rights to free speech and assembly pic.twitter.com/PumCWdfWnT

— Sam Liccardo (@sliccardo) June 3, 2016

but it's clear where his sympathies lie.

If I were Donald Trump, I'd be campaigning from now until November in Democrat stronghold cities around the USA. It won't win me those states, but the widely-reported predictable riots and abuse from the opposition will steadily win me marginal voters in every marginal state around the country. Even if those marginal voters can't stand me (or my hair), they'd rather be with me than the scumballs throwing eggs and beating up women.

The logistics of de-immigration

Eminent social justice activist Shaun King raises a pertinent point on the current topic (in the sphere of the US presidential candidate selection process) of what to do with the "immigrants of dubious legality" in the USA:

What do you think it would look like, practically speaking, for Trump to "round up" 450,000 immigrants per month and "ship them off".

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) October 15, 2015

This is, as several people has observed, quite a hard problem.

The first problem you have is finding the immigrants, and this is probably the killer. You've got 360M people in the USA, illegal immigrants are 10M-20M in number by various estimates, so for every 1000 illegals found you have to trawl (naively) about 20,000 legal citizens - and at 450K illegals/month constant rate you're looking at 2 years to remove nearly everyone. So every month you need to annoy 9M legal residents at some level in order to meet your quota. As immigrant numbers fall, that number of recently annoyed legal residents will rise. You'll start with unobtrusive measures, but as time goes on you'll need to get more and more intrusive - and most of the annoyed legal residents are citizens, and can vote against representatives who are supporting this measure.

Then you need to make them leave the country. Detention is expensive, ask anybody in the Federal Bureau of Prisons - average is about $100/day and that assumes amortizing entry and exit costs over many months. The sooner you can export them, the better. You need to fund daily 1-way flights from a wide range of cities to the dominant countries of residence of illegal immigrants: Mexico (obviously), major nations in Central/South America, and Pakistan/India/Bangladesh. The immigrants won't be paying for this - they'd rather pass their US$ to legal resident friends and rely on that largesse being transmitted to their home country for later pick-up, at a generous margin. So the US government will be implicitly boosting illegal financial transactions as a result. Occupancy rate on those planes is going to be highly variable. Assuming average occupancy of an evacuation plane at 50% - realistically, you can't fill them with paying passengers, ask anyone in the UK - that $700 is a reasonable round trip fare to Latin America, and noting that the return journey will need to be empty (don't even think about eating the profit margins of existing airlines, there's no way this turns out well) you're spending about $700M/month just on the export. This assumes zero cost on detention and transport to the airport, which is "optimistic".

What's the end run around this? Make the illegals deport themselves. Illegal immigrants come to the USA to work and earn money for their family, with the (faint) hope that they can eventually stay. This might occur by having a baby in the USA who will be a US citizen, and applying for residency on compassionate grounds; alternatively they might eventually find an employer willing to sponsor them. So remove that attraction. There are definite areas of employment for illegal immigrants; it depends on the region, but generally agriculture (crop picking), daily manual labour and domestic service are the top areas. Focus tax audits on those areas, reduce the marginal cost of legal labor (e.g. by increasing the deductability of costs associated with a provably legal labourer) and watch the illegal employment rate plummet.

This isn't a free ride - the government will still need to fund the free no-questions-asked one-way flights home, but if they really want to make this happen then it's probably the cheapest way to achieve the goal. With no income, and easy access to return journeys to one's home country, the labour problem will mostly fix itself.

Of course, this reduces the government benefit of illegal employment - is an incumbent administration willing to forego all the income from illegal activity?

The Silicon Valley Diversity Shitstorm

Talk about putting the cat among the pigeons. Journo Brian S. Hall wrote a short article about diversity in Silicon Valley: specifically "There Is No Diversity Crisis In Silicon Valley". It turns out to have been slightly controversial, as you can tell when you visit the original Forbes post:

The piece previously at this URL, titled "There Is No Diversity Crisis In Silicon Valley," published on 10/5/2015 [5th October 2015 for anyone using a sane date format], was deemed to have violated our Terms of Service and was removed.

Well, that's odd. What did it say? What could have violated the ToS?

Luckily, we can now read the original article on Brian's own site. An excerpt:

Silicon Valley doesn't just create greatness, it's probably the most open, welcoming, meritocratic-based region on the planet. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that disproportionately more Chinese, Indians, and LGBQT succeed in Silicon Valley than just about any place in America. Guess what? Everyone earned their job because of their big brains and ability to contribute.

The piece, to be fair, was rather heavy on anecdote. However in the ensuing Twitter blitzkreig there was some actual data posted including an illustrative stat on student study and degree achievements in STEM subjects which showed pretty clearly that white, Hispanic and black enroll in STEM programmes at about the same rate, but that the white students are disproportionately more successful in actually obtaining a degree. Asian students - of course! - enroll at twice the rate and obtain a degree disproportionately more often. So if you view a STEM degree as somewhat important in a Silicon Valley career then it's not entirely surprising that the ethnic makeup in SV correlates with those stats.

Anecdotally, Hall's assertions on race and LGBTQ seem about right to me, though I think he's missed a few letters off the latter term. The native Californians and other white Americans are distinctly in the numerical minority, and even obvious LGBTQ engineers are relatively plentiful. I also liked Hall's dig at the humanities as a contrast to "computer programming, engineering, chemistry — hard subjects that demand hard work", remembering the geography and history students lounging around after a couple of Finals exams early in the last semester after putting in a few strenuous 10-12 hour weeks, while the maths, physics and engineering students were still sweating away with 50 hour weeks revising for a series of painfully hard and objectively marked exams right at the end of the semester.

I'd probably take some issue with Hall's assertion that "Everyone earned their job because of their big brains and ability to contribute" - the latter is more aspirational than fact, SV hiring like anywhere else still has problems trying to determine whether someone who's obviously smart can actually be productive, and screws up that assessment reasonably frequently, but the basic idea is there. A SV company that does any discrimination other than by ability to do the job is going to shut off some of its source of talent, and in a hugely competitive hiring market that's a pretty dumb play.

Hall subsequently doubled down with the tweet

Tim Cook is gay Sundar Pichai is Indian Marissa Mayer is a woman They earned these roles. Their race, gender, orientation is not relevant

— Brian S Hall (@brianshall) October 8, 2015

It's worth noting that Google CEO Pichai came from a poor family in India and rose based on brutal merit. Though he had problems with the humanities in school:

He was a brilliant student but his geography and history used to let him down so he was never top of the year.

That's probably what annoyed all the humanities graduates who piled onto Hall on Twitter... Although it's a little tricky to argue for a glass ceiling for minorities in SV given the above facts, it didn't seem to stop a lot of people from trying.

SV still has recruiting and retention problems, and I'd call out the experience of women in particular - the tendency of male engineers to act like baboons is off-putting to any women engineers who want to be something other than male engineers with a slightly different placement of genitals. But I don't find anything particularly jarring, scandalous or untrue in Hall's piece, so I wonder why exactly Forbes decided to withdraw it under pressure. If it wasn't pulled because of falsehoods, was it pulled because it was too true?

Some illegals more equal than others - California edition

In a conversation at work today, a colleague mentioned that her Iceland-born spouse needed someone to go with him to the local branch of the California Department of Motor Vehicles (aka the First Circle of Hell) because he had to take a test. There was widespread surprise at this - didn't he have a valid licence from another country, and wasn't this OK? Yes he did, and no it wasn't; as of 15th May, the California DMV will no longer issue temporary driving licences when you pass their written test.

For context on why this matters: for foreign citizens, when you move to California and become resident (paying rent / utility bills locally) you're required to get a driving licence within 10 days of this event if you want to continue driving in California. Up until May, this was straight forward: you went to the DMV, took their written tests - tedious but not too hard - then booked a practical test and in return got a temporary driving licence that you could renew if the test got postponed. The practical test took 1-3 weeks to reserve a reasonable slot until recently, but this year's announcement that certain immigrants didn't have to prove any legal residence status has caused a huge rush of applications and backlog of tests.

Now that foreign citizens don't get the temporary licence, they can't drive unaccompanied from day 11 of their residency until the date that they pass the (admittedly easy) driving test. Sounds like a bit of a regression, so what's going on?

Let's look at the requirements for California DMV form AB60 guidelines on proving identity if you're not already a Californian:

Foreign Document that is valid, approved by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and electronically verified by DMV with the country of origin:

• Mexican Federal Electoral Card (Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) Credencial para Votar – 2013 version)
• Mexican Passport (issued in 2008 or later and includes digital photo and digital signature)
• Mexican Consular Card (Matricula Consular – 2006 and 2014 versions)
• Foreign Passport that is valid and approved by DMV (see page 4 & 5 for list of DMV approved passports). The customer must also provide his/her social security number (SSN) that is electronically verifiable with the Social Security Administration.

Well, that's tough luck if you're an illegal immigrant (i.e. not able to get a legit Social Security number because you're not a legal resident) and not Mexican, right? Luckily there's an alternative if you have a foreign passport but not an SSN: if you have one of the following then you're OK:

• Argentinian Identification Card (Documento Nacional de Identidad (DNI) – 2009 or 2012 version)
• Brazilian Consular Card (Carteira de Matricula Consular – 2010 version)
• Chilean Identification Card (Cedula de Identidad – 2013 version)
• Colombian Consular Card (Consular Registration – 2015 version)
• Ecuadorian National Identification Card (Cedula de Ciudadania – 2006 or 2009 version)
• Ecuadorian Consular Card (Tarjeta De Identification Consular – 2015 version)
• El Salvadorian Identification Card (Documento Unico de Identidad (DUI) – 2010 version)
• Guatemalan National Identification Card (Documento Personal de Identificacion (DPI) – 2012 version)
• Guatemalan Consular Card (Tarjeta de Identificacion Consular – 2002 version)
• Peruvian Identification Card (Documento Nacional de Identidad (DNI) – 2005 version)

Or you can show another foreign passport: so if you're a dual national then by my reading, you're sorted. Other than that, if you're not from Central/South America and don't have legal residence then you're pretty much sunk. Yay for the major South American nations, except Venezuela or Uruguay, but boo for anyone else.

To recap: if you're an illegal immigrant then you don't really care about driving illegally in the short term. But long term it could be a problem, which is why California has the above AB60 guidance about handing out driving licenses. If you're from Central/South America then they have you covered, otherwise they really don't seem to care. It's perfectly fine for a country to be antagonistic to illegal aliens (that's me struck off Shahid Haque-Hausrath's Christmas card list) but to be arbitrarily receptive to citizens of some countries and not others smacks of, oh I don't know, naked political favouritism?

And now legal immigrants will find it substantially harder to comply with the laws of the state that they're living in - and paying taxes to. Nice one, California.

Unexpected consequences of Obamacare and immigration amnesties

I'm not sure why this hasn't generated more outrage yet: the Washington Times has spotted that President Obama's plan to legalize employment for illegal immigrants might screw over American workers even more than initially suspected:

President Obama's temporary amnesty, which lasts three years, declares up to 5 million illegal immigrants to be lawfully in the country and eligible for work permits, but it still deems them ineligible for public benefits such as buying insurance on Obamacare's health exchanges.

Seems sensible enough, although the amnesty beneficiaries might well be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit if they have kids. But there's a consequence for the lack of health exchange rights:

Under the Affordable Care Act, that means businesses who hire them won't have to pay a penalty for not providing them health coverage [my emphasis] — making them $3,000 more attractive than a similar native-born worker, whom the business by law would have to cover.

Oopsie. Since the immigrants will tend to participate in the lower-paid end of the employment spectrum, that means the $3000 delta will be a huge fraction of the wage. That's quite the competitive advantage. Sure, it means in practice that they won't have ACA-compliant health care - and in fact I'd expect many employers to pay their amnestied workers a higher headline wage to compensate for this lack of employer-supported healthcare. Nevertheless, once it's legal to employ these workers openly, the wage differential makes them look very attractive.

This won't affect unionized jobs where wages can't easily be varied, but in the private sector the medium-sized businesses who have more than 50 employees will start sucking up all the amnestied labor they can and will stop hiring the locals. Small businesses which have pushed workers into part-time slots to avoid the ACA can now replace two part-time workers with a full-time amnestied worker.

This is what happens when you create a baroque, complicated legal framework for employment and health insurance. When you subsequently make changes, you will find that they have unexpected effects.