Should Your Employer Be an Immigration Cop?

individuals to perform immigration checks

i actually forget i i actually changed my answer

on this like three times and i forget i forget when i decided i think i actually said um i actually think i said that i agree but i was going to let you change my mind on this one uh so i was very torn good

yeah i said disagree um and so

this would be is it doing checks on private individuals or compelling private so making this is the status quo where this is the

status with the gov so just to understand what this is hinting at i mean or uh i the we already have the government compels employers yeah banks uh and um property owners who are renting their property i believe all three yeah are compelled to go through something approximating

an e-verify type of thing

uh where i should talk to details but uh yeah

this is this is the status quo so this isn't

some theoretical reality this is the status quo today the question is phrased as an ought to be able to so this it does let you us lean on our idealism a little

bit of the one they ought not to be able to so um you know uh so i guess i would agree they ought not to be able to you know um uh you know practically it's like what it's similar to the ice question it's like what would i get rid of this

stuff tomorrow you know what are the trade-offs i mean and i i hate this stuff i will say like i you know i i used to face it in my uh work when i was running a content platform used by tens of millions of people and you know you're basically obligated to be a

cop like like someone uploads something and without even anyone complaining i have a proactive

obligation to you know or if a moderator notices something or whatever like we have a proactive obligation to act as cops and that does rub me the wrong way that that uh my government compels me to be a to be a cop right

um but then uh

you know so so yeah so it's not it's not hard to convince you know the odd that ought

not to be

possible but at the same time i do i do find the you know these are as we said at the outset like these are practical questions how do you make it how do you build a system

that works

and so if we're getting a lot of people here who shouldn't

be here you know what is what is an

effective way of dealing with that if if renters or banks checking people's identity is an effective way of dealing with that like do i you know swallow my objection because it produces

an outcome that i like it's a tough question for me yeah i feel like

it's kind of like aml kyc rules and the rules that you mentioned about content where you know they've they've deputized millions of people you know in our industry there's you know millions and millions and millions of hours i mean there's hundreds of thousands of employees that do aml kyc that's a brand new thing you know 30 40 years ago you you know you could like buy a boat and pay 12 grand cash and that was allowed because it was your money now you you like they're going to treat you

like a criminal and they're going to treat the

bank like a criminal they're going to be like well how did you do this and all this and there's there's a lot of wheel spinning um you know tens

and tens of thousands of people and then enforcement

officers enforcing them and it's like well where's the crime and and with with the immigration you know you have uh you know million hotels that are checking to make sure every single staff member is legit and all of this but where's

the the okay so you know okay so maybe this

is maybe

not central to the question but it's probably a divide that's come up a couple times maybe

it

makes sense to dig into this a little more i i

do believe that being

here illegally i think it makes

sense of this is a crime in and of itself

yeah like i think that part of

being part of being in a

functioning society i love this analogy or this this thought experiment that's like does the does my suppose you and i ever had a dispute or you have a dispute with your neighbor uh you know does your right to sue your neighbor make or your neighbor's right to sue you does that make you more free or

less

free and you know i'm on the side that this makes us more free the the fact that we can use a court system this is a more civilized and more free way of resolving this dispute than going right to

punching each other or threatening each other or whatever whatever would have happened before this

and so if someone is i i think it is and i'm open-minded on we can imagine decentralized systems or better things in the united states status quo but like the idea that

someone could be in my

community and they're not like an addressable knowable person not saying they have to like wear an rfid tag broadcasting their name or whatever but like i i want to know like because if they're if they're here illegally like they can smash my car and they can go back

to mexico

yeah you know like they can and and so whereas if someone is a citizen if they're known you know these these kinds of things you know can't happen to the same

degree and so i do

i do consider it like something of a requirement or a good thing at least that like the people who are either citizens of a

nation or visiting a nation or guest residents of a nation like people should be addressable and

and and known there should be some way of looking this stuff up we can do it in ways that respect privacy and so on but the idea that someone could just be here and and not have the right to be here and be doing things and i can't yeah you know address them i i i that that rubs me the wrong way

i think that's a fair point i think that's a fair point you know when i in the early 90s

i lived in

california and they had two different insurance systems

you could get for your car they had so

many incidents of exactly what you're talking about illegals

from mexico who would come up and

they smash your car and they'd be like i'm not paying i'm going back to mexico and so you had two

levels of insurance you get the regular car insurance that everybody got and then you got a

special car insurance that costs twice as much that covers you for the illegal immigrants from

mexico who are going to smash your car and they're going to skip town and they the insurance company don't play by the rules insurance company isn't going to file a claim with their company because they don't have one they're going to skip town so so yeah that's a fair

point i think that but going back to the point of is it right to make everybody a cop to enforce that i think probably not sure so

but then it becomes well okay how are we going to do it yeah like

you know how we you know if if we

accept that it is bad you know maybe you might want an alternative easier immigration system guest resident maybe we want other alternatives but like that's not what we have we have we have people who are coming here illegally who are not citizens who aren't legible to

the system etc like well we

don't want ice to do it yeah we don't want private employers do we

don't the banks do well how do we do it how do we ever how do you ever and this comes back to enforcement

you know the countries i've seen do do it well you know a lot of other countries have very very restrictive enforcement we were in saudi arabia and my wife needed to get surgery so they had a they had a visa thing that said you you are only allowed to stay whatever 90 days or something 60 days and then you have to leave and then you can come back and that was just our particular

visa that she had at the time well she

had a surgery and they said well you you're really not supposed to you know she had the surgery on like the 59th day and they say you're the doctor says well you're not supposed to leave and i kind of asked around with immigration and stuff and they're like the rules is the rule you're leaving you you know you break this rule you're out of here and you're never coming back you're gonna get a you know in in uae they will um they'll put a stamp on your passport that's basically like the fu stamp and you're not coming back you know they're gonna put a big x on it and it's something like a decade before you're ever even allowed to apply so if you have strong enforcement and

there's challenges with both

those countries in other ways but if you have strong enforcement where people know that gee i better not be here illegally because uh it's it's right now there's no penalty at all you know it's a revolving door they'll they maybe not kick you out maybe they'll give

you a free hotel but yeah but

what is that because well they're coming in illegally so they're not coming through the immigration

system jailing them

just cost money we could revisit your caning idea

like you know like it's uh what are we what are you know what are we doing like because it's you know

to take the mexican who hits the car and i don't i don't even know if that stereotype's true i'll tell assume it is you what are we doing with the mexican who hits the car

you know what okay but they

they're either run away or if it what

is the i could look i'm open-minded i agree that if if if

you're maybe the right kind of strictness you can be looser you know i'm i'm open-minded about that but what is the strict thing that you can actually do i

mean if you if we had strong border if we had our enforcement at the border very very strong border then kicking

out people would make mean something

because then they couldn't just come right back in sure and it's like hey

you've you've broken our rules

you were a guest here you violated it you were accused

of a misdemeanor or you didn't have the paperwork or you were only supposed to be here 90 days and you stayed build the wall drums on the wall is that is that that's the

yeah i believe in a strong i believe in a strong um

you know a strong

border and you know having that control you know just like you

would if you have a castle you know

you can be as kind of a king in your own castle as you want um you know i'm very uh you know i i don't it doesn't bother me like um if somebody

comes in a space that i own and does something i

disagree with but there's certain things i wouldn't have tolerance for i

should be able to kick those

people out i like that you know and part of why i like having this conversation makes me feel like we're succeeding here a little bit it's like there's a complete logical consistency you

know like

you're you know you might have reached different conclusions but i do i do see a logical consistency to