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GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

latimes.com

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

#451

Post by dunstad »

wil421 wrote: post #446
dunstad wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I would love that actually. ICE runs concentration camps. Not enough people treat them how they deserve.

Can you point to some sources so I can understand how they are concentration camps? I’ve been to Dachau and nothing on the news shows anything like what I saw there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concentration_and_inte...

From the article:

> In 2019, many experts, including Andrea Pitzer, the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, have acknowledged the designation of the detention centers as "concentration camps" [227] [228] particularly given that the centers, previously cited by Texas officials for more than 150 health violations [229] and reported deaths in custody,[230] reflect a record typical of the history of deliberate substandard healthcare and nutrition in concentration camps.[231] Though some organizations have tried to resist the "concentration camp" label for these facilities, [232] [233] hundreds of Holocaust and genocide scholars rejected this resistance via an open letter addressed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. [234]

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

#452

Post by shadowgovt »

malvosenior wrote: post #389
shadowgovt wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not changing definition; I'm going by definition used by others. https://www.thedailybeast.com/holocaust-survivor-yes-the-bor...

You’re one person trying to change the definition, but you’re correct there are others trying to do the same.

I mean, if anyone should have some stake in the definition, it should probably be Holocaust survivors. Which is one of the reasons (to pop context back to the up-thread post) I find the claim the comparison cheapens the memory of the Holocaust somewhat worthy of skepticism.

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

#453

Post by ljm »

_7bxa wrote: post #395
slykat wrote: post #381

I find it ironic that the same people protesting the contract would also protest a bakery that refuses to sell a product for say a same sex couple (or if you were in the 60s, restaurants that refused to serve blacks). You either have a viewpoint that: 1) a business shouldn't make a moral judgement on its customers and be accessible to all 2) A business can make moral judgements on its customers and choose not to do b…

The difference is not serving black or queer people isn't a moral judgement -- it's just discrimination (there isn't anything inherently wrong with being Black the same way there isn't anything wrong with being queer or Asian or Indian, those things aren't a choice unlike being a Nazi). At best, not serving minorities is a shitty moral judgement. Not serving ICE is a more legitimate moral judgement because ICE has th…

There is nothing inherently wrong with serving ICE. You might not like it, but many of your compatriots do.

I don't like what they do at all, I think it's reprehensible, backwards, and purely uncivilised. But people you utterly hate have friends too, and they see something different than you do, and we do not have a singular moral world-view.

This situation with ICE should totally change, but that change is a function of your vote, not a function of protesting against Gitlab.

I very strongly argue that there should never be a single perspective on morality, in the way that these posts suggest there should.

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

#454

Post by shadowgovt »

thereare5lights wrote: post #385
shadowgovt wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several employees have left and made public they left over Dragonfly and Maven projects at Google.

Who?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.engadget.com/amp/2018/05/14...

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

#455

Post by tomschlick »

zer00eyz wrote: post #443
tomschlick wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICE is getting raked over the coals in the court of public opinion because they don't have the funding nor the manpower to deal with 100k people coming over the border each month. Many asylum seekers are just exploiting the asylum system with invalid cases as economic migrants to delay the process so they don't get sent back home. All the while congress hasn't done much at all to fix the obvious problems in the law (…

Prior world war II the illegal immigration from Mexico was a genuine issue for America. DO you want to know how they stopped illegal immigration cold? They simply fined any business or employer who employed them severely. The problem quickly resolved itself without having to lock people up. It is entirely possible to curtail the number of people coming here once there is NO work or services for them. It works, and we…

> DO you want to know how they stopped illegal immigration cold? They simply fined any business or employer who employed them severely. The problem quickly resolved itself without having to lock people up.

I'd be completely in favor of that. Especially in the recent case where ICE raided a factory in the south owned by the Koch brothers. We need congress to act on that though as AFAIK there is not a current framework to prosecute businesses for it.

> No one wants to "solve it" because our entire food supply and production (meat packing to local restaurants) is powered by illegal immigrants. Lawn care, construction, plenty of industries run on cheap (illegal) immigrant labor.

I agree. Once we stop the illegal flow we could start offering more work visas and other things to the people already here and newcomers. But without stopping the flow the people doing it the legal (hard) way are now competing against the illegal migrants leaving little incentive to do it right.

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

#456

Post by semiotagonal »

zer00eyz wrote: post #427
opnitro wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to think labor should have more power over what it creates. I'm not sure how an example of being required to work on something they objected to due to economic factors outside of their control is an example that helps your case.

> I'm not sure how an example of being required to work on something they objected to due to economic factors outside of their control is an example that helps your case. Quitting on moral grounds is a luxury in the scope of human history, and is a luxury for MOST Americans today. Im not sure it is a realistic stance for most people (but probably for most of HN). I don't think GitHub is going to (or should) change it…

> Quitting on moral grounds is a luxury in the scope of human history

So what? Freedom of speech is a luxury in the scope of human history as well.

Moreover, someone is making these choices. If it's within your power to have an effect on the choice, and one choice is more moral in your estimation, you're practically obliged to act, even if other people don't have that power.

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

#457

Post by opnitro »

zer00eyz wrote: post #427
opnitro wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to think labor should have more power over what it creates. I'm not sure how an example of being required to work on something they objected to due to economic factors outside of their control is an example that helps your case.

> I'm not sure how an example of being required to work on something they objected to due to economic factors outside of their control is an example that helps your case. Quitting on moral grounds is a luxury in the scope of human history, and is a luxury for MOST Americans today. Im not sure it is a realistic stance for most people (but probably for most of HN). I don't think GitHub is going to (or should) change it…

I agree it's a luxury, and I'm happy people at github can do it. I don't think it _should_ be a luxury. They are quitting because they have a direct relationship they feel is immoral. If people aren't supposed to take stands what they can work for, you're advocating for the vast majority of the population (ie. ~non CEOS) having no moral agency in the place where they spend a huge fraction of their lives.

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

#458

Post by SauciestGNU »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #323
sneak wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Starvation, death by exposure, death from preventable disease and the like might not literally be guns, but the effects aren't that dissimilar and they are all consequences of not working in the US. There's not exactly a robust social safety net here.

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

#459

Post by heyoni »

tomschlick wrote: post #424
heyoni wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of good rebuttals you’ve conveniently missed. Also, 300k/year was the maximum in 2000.

> There are plenty of good rebuttals you’ve conveniently missed. I got 5 replies in a span of 5 minutes. I can't respond that fast with the detail and nuance of my positions. > Also, 300k/year was the maximum in 2000. And now we are up to 500k last year, and another 950k this year. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration

Yep, we’re having a record year but it’s been much lower for the last 20 years (going by memory).

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

#460

Post by tomschlick »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #449
tomschlick wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have the manpower, they're just doing everything as inefficiently and inhumanely as possible in order to arrive at this outcome. Source? Last I checked the system was still drastically in need of border patrol, immigration judges, case workers, beds to house people, etc. Those things can't just spin up in a week and be effective.

I don't have the time to look up a source at the moment, but Trump changed policy to detain immigrants until their hearing rather than releasing them. He's also keeping them in custody longer in order to force them through court proceedings rather than just deporting them. The system was already desperately in need of resources before Trump added this strain. We could go back to an Obama-era level of need, but instea…

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