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GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

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Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#321

Post by smsm42 »

standardUser wrote: post #152
masonic wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making people sleep in cages on concrete That was during the Obama Administration , yet those in outrage over ICE now were utterly silent then . Why is that?

Because if you haven't noticed, there is a general sense among the younger generations that the many, many ills of yesteryear are actually bad, not just "business as usual" and instead of tolerating them we should start to fight back. The people who are carrying the torch of this mentality were teenagers and twenty-something during the Obama administration. Now they are all grown ups. The better question is, why were…

> many, many ills of yesteryear are actually bad, not just "business as usual" and instead of tolerating them we should start to fight back

And somehow that moment of clarity by pure coincidence happened on January 20, 2017? Sorry, not buying that particular bridge.

> The people who are carrying the torch of this mentality were teenagers and twenty-something during the Obama administration.

Literally the same people in the press who promoted the "people in cages" thing were working at the same placed during Obama admin and virtually none of them said anything. There were some very small number that did, but the overwhelming majority said nothing and certainly there was no widespread public outrage about it and no employees told their employers they wouldn't work for any contract with Obama administration because it puts people in cages. No, not buying this bridge either - it was several years ago, it's not decades. They were the same grown ups then as they are now. Only back then their tribe was in power, so outrage wouldn't be appropriate.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#322

Post by shadowgovt »

baggy_trough wrote: post #312
shadowgovt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of characterization is definitional. See: the Japanese Internment camps the US ran during World War II.

I don't think the immigrant detention centers measure up to the definition at, for example, the Encylopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/concentration-camp

I remember in 2016 when people were predicting people would be debating the definition of concentration camp during this administration.

Here we are.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#323

Post by Rebelgecko »

sneak wrote: post #247
undersuit wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You entered into an agreement with your employer and the US government when you were hired. You gave them permission by consenting to work within the system and you probably filled out some sort of form with a W in front of it. You may work outside of the system.

I made no such agreement with the government. You are manufacturing consent where none exists. The sole reason I pay is because of the threat of force, the promise of a gun to my head if I do not. There is no consent.

Who will put a gun to your head if you stop working in the US?

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#324

Post by tomp »

hnruss wrote: post #91
creaghpatr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICE is not a partisan organization, it's a government agency. If you pay taxes, you support ICE, and are their customer, period.

If you pay taxes, you "support" the entire government. That doesn't mean that you are in favor of all of the things that it is doing. If you pay taxes, you are a citizen, not a "customer". These things are not the same.

Couldn't you say the same about ICE? You support their main function, protecting the border, but aren't in favor in all of the things they're doing in order to achieve that goal.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#325

Post by mercutio2 »

jcims wrote: post #289
house9-2 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big difference is that "illegal alien" really does refer to a person simply existing in a country they are not supposed to be in Correct, I have no issue with the term: "illegal alien" > shortening it to just the adjective "illegals" works in a derogatory manner

Is 'criminals' better? Also technically true.

Working without documentation, or overstaying a visa, or entering a country without a visa, have historically been misdemeanors in the USA. The current administration has decided to treat them somewhat differently, but that's quite new.

Americans don't, typically, describe people who received a parking ticket, or a speeding ticket, as criminals. In the same way, most people have not, historically, referred to people overstaying or working while on non-work visas, as illegals.

Melania Trump makes a particularly good example for this. Her profession as a model is high status, so the allegations that she worked without an appropriate visa in the US in the mid 90s does not generally lead to people calling her a criminal.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#326

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

malvosenior wrote: post #278
guitarbill wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

visas on the other hand are incredibly easy to revoke, or simply not renew. and you're employer has to support a greencard petition if you're e.g. on an h-1b. i know of at least one person's GC application that got torpedoed after his relationship with his manager soured. especially if they have families, employees on a visa simply aren't going to speak out.

> employees on a visa simply aren't going to speak out. I know many people with visas that are against illegal immigration. Don't assume that everyone who's not from the US hates ICE and supports unfettered immigration.

As do I. It makes sense really, the queue for a green card for someone from India is 12 years now, while there are people 'cutting in line'.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#327

Post by RonaldRaygun »

masonic wrote: post #148
andyburke wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are generally not separated from their parents when their parents commit non-violent minor offenses. Crossing a border is, at the least, non-violent. How major or minor it is is debatable. The basis of your argument is wrong. What else ya got?

Children are generally not separated from their parents when their parents commit non-violent minor offenses Children are separated from parents every damn day in cases of neglect or endangerment. Hell, we get CPS involved when a kid is left unattended in a car or alone at home, or even if a home is dangerously unkempt. Dragging children across two thousand miles of desert and multiple borders (where many die en rout…

> Dragging children across two thousand miles of desert and multiple borders (where many die en route) is far worse endangerment.

When compared to your cushy first-world existence, sure. Some might consider continuing to try to raise children in abject poverty permeated by narco-terror to be endangerment. As usual, it comes down to whether you think any random stranger from these countries is likely to be a bad person or likely to be a good person. I am happy that I see goodness in others, and I feel sorry for those who live the other way.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#328

Post by nostrademons »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #320
nostrademons wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's heavily team-dependent. I was on a team at Google where I was the only American citizen, with teammates from Iceland, England, Vietnam, India (4), Taiwan (2), and China (2). I was also on a team where there were basically zero non-citizens, and most of my teammates were from places like Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, etc.

Is that sort of distribution typical? Do teams tend to self-segregate?

Teams do self-segregate. What often happens is that the team manager ends up recruiting people they are comfortable with, which in practice means recruiting people who are culturally similar. If the team grows, the same dynamic works on the next level of managers, and so on. So immigrant managers tend to recruit other immigrants, native-born managers tend to recruit other native-born Americans, and so on. The manager of the first team was an Icelandic immigrant; the manager of the second was an American-born person of Indian descent.

A similar dynamic works on sex, as well. About half of the teams I worked at were roughly 40% women; the other half of them had zero women. Women are generally reluctant to join a team where they will be the only woman, and also word gets around about who the female-friendly managers are. So those female-friendly managers get teams that are close to 50% female, while other managers get teams of zero women. (Statistically, Google Engineering was about 10% female and IIRC 50-60% foreign-born, which means that I encountered about twice as many women that I would've been predicted to and about half as many foreigners. I wonder what that says about my personality.)

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#329

Post by alkibiades »

commandlinefan wrote: post #125
duxup wrote: post #19

I'd like to get a feel about what volume of employees have an issue with these things. From issue to issue I hear about various forms of employees making themselves heard but it is REALLY hard to jive with what that means. We've seen Google employees post about some ideas that seemed to be genuinely popular (measure that how you will...) but later ideas or advocacy were reportedly far less supported by the general em…

I also have to wonder what percentage of GitHub’s employees _are_ non-US citizens. Every programming job I’ve ever had in the U.S. was for a company that was staffed by at least 90% foreigners; if they see U.S. immigration as an adversary, they may be opposing any contract on personal grounds.

a lot of non citizens support ice because if they are working at a company like github they got here legally and don’t see it as fair that others just get to skip the line
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