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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

#601

Post by mattigames »

Thorentis wrote: post #536
rtpg wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false dicothomy The actual (IMO correct) position most of these people share is the following two points at once: - businesses should have a moral position, since businesses are just a set of people - that moral position should be right! This isn’t rocket science! Stuff like “don’t support a business doing bad stuff” and “support businesses doing good stuff” is just really basic consumer activism. There’s n…

This is not a false dichotomy at all. Businesses should have a moral position, sure. That moral position should be right? According to who? The business itself? Then that second point is redundant. Everybody thinks their moral position is right, that's what morals are. It's a tautology otherwise. GitHub employees think their moral position on ICE is right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because the…

> GitHub employees think their moral position on ICE is right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like.

A lot of music artists in the 50s and 60s refused to play on segregated crowds (where black people is separated from white people, usually blacks in the back), they did it because they though they were right and should be able to boycott doing business with those who disagree (despite their record-label or manager thinking otherwise) you think those artists should have done otherwise?

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

#602

Post by CapricornNoble »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #275
tenpies wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is an attribution of intent. You see "white nationalism" but: > Making people sleep in cages There was a spike in the number of illegal immigrants in the last few years, facilities were swamped. This was an unfortunate but temporary measure. It would be more irresponsible to just release people into the country without establishing their identity, criminal history, or a suitable guardian (for chil…

>> Making people sleep in cages > There was a spike in the number of illegal immigrants in the last few years, facilities were swamped. This was an unfortunate but temporary measure. It is still going on. It is not okay. > It would be more irresponsible to just release people into the country without establishing their identity, criminal history, or a suitable guardian (for children). They are not keeping people unti…

>>>the level of asylum seekers and other migrants was not substantially different from the past couple decades.

What's your source for this? This site[1] indicates otherwise (even the 10-year chart shows a huge growth in applications). And this article[2] states 800,000 people detained so far this year. I'm sure ICE and CBP's infrastructure and processes were never meant to handle populations of this size. Also, note that in [2] many of these people are asylum shopping.

>>>We are setting a terrible precedent on the international stage for how people fleeing danger are treated.

The precedent has already been set: impoverished people the world over know that if they are willing to accept some risk, they can lie their way into the US and get free stuff. People are kidnapping kids so they can pretend they are family. Migrants from central Africa have NGOs providing them with French-language documents on not cooperating with ICE or the US government. These people are buying plane tickets to Brazil, then taking buses ALLLLLL the way up Central America (lots of places to stop and apply for asylum there) so they can illegally cross the border into the US. Who is paying the salaries for these NGOs? And WHY? Those are the hard questions that aren't being asked. The narrative is one that appeals to empathy in order to obscure deeper issues.

Look at this article[4]. It tries to paint a picture that the rights of African migrants are somehow being infringed upon because Mexico is not enabling them to move onward to the US. But this is specifically discouraged once you are out of your country of origin and no longer in immediate danger.[5] So again, ask yourself, why is this narrative being pushed? And why now?

[1]https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/asylum-applicatio...

[2]https://www.voanews.com/usa/immigration/us-bound-migrants-as...

[3]https://youtu.be/mJlOmMj21uM

[4]https://prospect.org/power/african-asylum-seekers-u.s.-stuck...

[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee#Restriction_of_onward_...

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

#603

Post by geofft »

patcon wrote: post #590
geofft wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most compelling arguments I found is that just because we happen to work in a field that lets us exert our influence over society doesn't make our moral sensibilities any better than the rest of society. What, then, does? Democracy is a good idea, sure. But what happens when democracy reaches a conclusion that seems obviously unjust? Do we decide that our own sense of right and wrong must be flawed? (This is a…

> But what happens when democracy reaches a conclusion that seems obviously unjust? In that case, we imagine a better democracy. If someone feels empathy is what makes their local democracy work better, and the further-above larger spheres of democracy no longer embody that: We should imagine a new democracy that optimizes for empathy, no?

I'm not sure I follow concretely what is meant by "imagine a better democracy." Does it involve stopping the unjust outcomes (by persuasion, influence, or force) or just advocating a new constitutional convention at some point? And how do we make it better / "optimize for empathy" - do we change how votes are allocated and weighted? Do we enshrine empathy as a constitutional principle and ask judges to stop unempathetic laws?

Are the protesters in Hong Kong imagining a new democracy that optimizes for empathy? Did the plaintiffs in Obergefell do so? What about the soldiers at Normandy?

Is refusing to work for employers that sell to ICE part of imagining a better democracy?

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

#604

Post by CapricornNoble »

harryh wrote: post #565
CapricornNoble wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>I think the core idea here is: this organization is doing bad things. By not supplying them with goods and services we can stop those bad things from happening. Government programs NEVER just end, and certainly not do to simple supply disruptions. So they won't STOP doing bad things, they'll just continue to do bad things with even less resources, making the net effects even worse. Eventually you might end up with…

"Don't ever try to stop bad people from doing bad things because if you do they will only do worse things" is not a point of view I am willing to accept. In addition, "Government programs NEVER just end" is also obviously incorrect. Our government once had a program of segregating black people from large swaths of society. This program, thankfully, no longer exists.

Ok I probably should have phrased that as "rarely" instead of "never". There are, after all, always exceptions...

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

#605

Post by mattigames »

slykat wrote: post #585
Thorentis wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What bothers me the most is how myopic people are about this. Does anyone not see how dangerous it will be if we have the world's largest companies choosing to do business based on their internal moral grounds? Do we really want tech companies to have moral councils that vet customers? If you want to fix ICE, then by all means, attack the problem at its source! Take that well paid Github salary of yours and fund the…

I see you as the myopic here; by pretending you only have to the long term stuff (votes, campaing) and that the short term stuff doesn't matter or shouldn't be done (like the employees complaining in this case) like these kind of protests live in a vacuum; when artists in the 50s refused to play in segregated crowds you think they didn't ALSO advocate for the long term stuff like voting for congressmen in favor of less racism? Absolutely nothing lives in a vacuum, and creating noise against ICE like they are doing in this case can help even more than doing the politics part themselves, because the exposure they get influences other people reading such news.

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

#606

Post by [deleted] »

Analemma_ wrote: post #111
olah_1 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that deliberately commit crimes typically suffer all of these things, yes. If you believe that illegally crossing a border is not a crime, then that's a different discussion that could be had.

The people who crossed the border seeking asylum are not committing a crime (seeking asylum is not illegal unless you stay in the country after being denied at a hearing), and even the people who are crossing illegally are committing a misdemeanor. Do you also support such conditions for people who get parking tickets?

[deleted]

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

#607

Post by manigandham »

drjesusphd wrote: post #483
slykat wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not see the negative repercussions for businesses serving the public to be allowed to make a moral judgement on who they do business with?

If that's the case then there's no room whatsoever for capitalism to be anything other than an amoral system we should be ashamed of. Vote with your dollar. You're allowed to make your own moral choices and refuse to contribute to evil.

Capitalism is nothing but an economic system where you own the means to production. There is no inherent morality.

Nobody has an issue with you making choices and voting with your dollars. The issue is forcing those choices on everyone else (as in a business, especially as a non-owner) through your own interpretation of morality.

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

#608

Post by manigandham »

harryh wrote: post #462
supernova87a wrote: post #348

I question how much an employee should concern him/herself with how a product is used once it's created. You have to let certain control go after a point. Or if your product is open to everyone, you'll have to live with the fact that people may use it in ways you disagree with. Xerox or Canon (or whoever) probably makes copiers that ICE uses to make copies. Lenovo or Apple probably makes hardware that they use also t…

I am not a GH employee nor do I speak for them. But I think a fair point of view is that it would be GREAT if the employees of Xerox and Canon and Lenovo and Apple and Ford and the airlines and even the farmers all took the same stance as GH employees. If that actually happened, ICE would cease to be able to function incredibly quickly. Which would be good. This is basically the point of these protests.

Why? That's like saying the police should cease to function in their enforcement of the law.

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

#609

Post by manigandham »

harryh wrote: post #563
1111236112347 wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be really be good to prevent Homeland Security Investigations, a major division of ICE, from investigating sexual abuse of children, and rescuing children from abusive situations? And about one of every 10 agents in Homeland Security’s investigative section — which deals with all kinds of threats, including terrorism — is now assigned to child sexual exploitation cases. Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/inter…

There are lots of organizations that do both good and bad things. I hear that the KKK sometimes did some good community building work in addition to lynching black people. It is, apparently, the judgement of a large swatch of GH employees that whatever good ICE does, it is not outweighed by the bad. Given that, I believe their actions make sense.

That is completely dependent on people having an accurate assessment of the situation, and that is rarely the case in the current outrage driven political climate.

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

#610

Post by refurb »

p1necone wrote: post #540
refurb wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you see as “lengthening the process”, others see as actually aligning the process with the laws. HN loves to rail against the corrupt H1-B system, but apparently actually getting asylum seekers is amoral. What would be more honest is to say “I don’t like cheap tech labor, so therefore clamping down on H1-Bs is good.” And “I don’t like the Trump administration and I want an open immigration system, so what Trump…

H1-B visas and asylum seekers are two entirely different things, I'm not sure why you're trying to conflate them. Edit: arguing about the legality of the asylum seekers is also missing the point.

The point is, people like to claim “immigration good”, but when you dig down into their actions, you find their actual views are heavily influenced by self-serving goals.
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