I deeply suspect that large swathes of the employees at a lot of these large companies don't really care either way.

As with any large community of people, there are some who are more vocal than others. Call them what you want (protestors/agitators/woke/etc), but I get the feeling that they're getting a disproportionately large amount of focus from the media and I guess management.

Certainly in my experience at an unnamed employer, the first I heard about protests and problems at my work place was when I read about it on the internet - there was nothing in my immediate workplace at all to suggest any of what was reported was actually even happening, let alone pervasive.

> Call them what you want (protestors/agitators/woke/etc), but I get the feeling that they're getting a disproportionately large amount of focus from the media and I guess management.

Explicitly so. Loud voices make headlines, headlines get clicks, clicks get ad revenue. The entire industry is geared to produce maximum clicks and, ergo, maximum loud voice. This has been the theme for a while now.

The issue, though, is that Management can ignore a couple of angry cranks -- or just fire them -- but they can't avoid news articles.

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.

Every non-citizen I know keeps their head down and doesn't express their personal opinions on political matters (particularly relating to ICE) because they don't want to jeopardize their visa. It would be strange and kinda stupid for a foreign programmer on an H1B to oppose a contract with ICE because they do eventually want to get that Green Card and eventually citizenship, and they know who holds the power in that relationship.

(It's also amusing to see that sometimes shift when they get their citizenship; I had a Japanese classmate in college who was on first a student visa, then an H1B, then a green card for about 15 years. He had zero political opinions for the whole time I knew him. As soon as he got his citizenship, he's active in local politics. It's more about urban planning, transit, and YIMBY efforts than immigration, though.)

You are correct. As someone who used to be on very restrictive visas for a while - your job is not “just a job” anymore. It was very much a source of constant stress for me knowing that political shifts at work or a terrible boss could very well send you packing in a matter of days.

This will be less likely to shift in the coming years, since the US government is openly investigating the ability to revoke citizenship. It's depressing to see, but I guess it shouldn't be surprising because the US approach to citizenship - birthright and/or naturalization - is not universally the case in other countries.

> Every programming job I’ve ever had in the U.S. was for a company that was staffed by at least 90% foreigners.

Where the hell are you working? I'm going to call bullshit, because it's really not that easy to get a work visa in the US. You're saying 90% of your colleagues weren't US citizens?

At every large company where I have worked (Intel, Qualcomm, Google, Facebook) the majority of my colleagues have been non-citizens. In some cases (Qualcomm SD, Google) 100% of the people on my team were non-citizens.

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.)

It's absolutely not bullshit. I've worked places where this is true and places where it isn't. In my experience, the former is more common.

Pretty much true for most large tech companies, at least in the SF Bay Area. I've worked at 2 large and 1 small tech co and it was only the small company that had mostly US citizens (mostly because of the cost of dealing with immigration lawyers etc)

It feels like closer to 50% noncitizen where I work, but could be closer to 90% if you include naturalized citizens.

One of my first SW jobs (mid-scale startup in Palo Alto) I had multiple canadians on my team and we had some chinese and indian immigrants on other teams. I wouldn't say 90%, but a sizable percentage.

At other companies like Google and Microsoft I've had plenty of immigrant colleagues along with colleagues at offices overseas. Some eventually choose to return to their home country, some migrate here after starting at the employer.

The main game studio I worked for also had lots of chinese and korean immigrants on staff, but I suspect that was influenced by the parent company being korean.

My current team is at least 80% foreign-born-and-rasied, myself included, but I don't know everyone's immigration status. But this is the "whitest", most American team I've worked with in the last 8 years in Silicon Valley. Prior to that I was in the mid-west and I was the only foreign engineer.

> I'm going to call bullshit,

Will people please consider a moment's thought before using this adolescent phrase? People throwing it around are probably not using it with its most precise and defensible meaning (a la Harry Frankfurt). So the most charitable alternative gloss is that it's used carelessly to mean someone is just wrong. It's a very poor (because ambiguous) word choice for that. I suspect it's usually deployed to suggest someone is lying, for which you need specific evidence beyond believing a statement to be incorrect. That evidence is very rarely available in an HN comment.

It's hard to be thoughtful about using language, and I'm no exemplar. But a good start is just avoiding reflexively spitting out some rarely useful prefabricated phrases. This is one.

This is true in a lot of places. In my PhD program (in a US university), the vast majority of us are not US citizens.

I suspect they’re saying anyone who looks/sounds different must be foreign.

There is a rule about inferring the most charitable interpretation IIRC.

And I don't think one should restrict that reasoning to only the foreign-born employees. Native-born US citizens working side-by-side with employees who have regular contact with our immigration process get a second-row seat to how broken it is.

(Spoilers: personal observation, it's pretty broken.)

You're assuming that legal immigrants from around the world working high paid tech jobs have common cause with "illegal" immigrants coming across the southern border.

In my anecdotal experience it's not so simple.

There are massive logistical challenges with processing mass influxes of immigrants into a country, particularly people who are coming through outside of the legal process.

I would think a large contingent of GitHub employees want the people working at ICE to be using the best tools possible to achieve their mission. Many are probably quite proud of US government agencies using their tools, the same as if NASA or Executive Branch or Congress was using Github.

IMO it’s a very difficult situation when certain employees are arranging political protests against specific customers of the company, and making other employees uncomfortable to express their own potentially divergent viewpoints.

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

A good portion of GitHub’s employees live in Europe. Of the employees who live in America, most are citizens.

How would you even know that? Assuming you weren't high up in HR?

So? Smart people can figure out that they can be made "illegal" by the stroke of a pen, even if they've complied with every rule they've encountered so far.

Not really. If government fiat takes away my US visa, and for some reason does so instantaneously with no grace period, then I'd still only be an illegal alien for the few days it takes to get my affairs in order and fly home. The kind of tech worker who's employed full time at github isn't in a remotely comparable situation to someone who's in the country illegally.

It's not actually that easy to revoke someone's citizenship. I know many people who came to the US legally that are vehemently opposed to illegal immigration precisely because they followed the rules and don't see why others shouldn't have to.

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'.

This touches on my greatest frustration with the national debate about prosecution/tolerance of illegal immigration:

One of my main reasons for opposing illegal immigration is that it's contrary to the rule of law. It subverts the democratic process, and makes suckers of anybody who does try to follow these laws. I'm actually a big fan of legal immigration.

But I rarely (never?) hear this distinction made in public statements by advocates of illegal immigration. At least in public, they seem to assume that anybody who opposes illegal immigration opposes all immigration, and even worse, does so out of ignorance or bigotry.

Assuming I'm not the only person with my particular views, that conflation is infuriating. I can only hope it's done unwittingly.

As the war on drugs has also demonstrated, there is only but so much behavior-shaping you can achieve with people via the law.

If a law is consistently and chronicallhy broken (and especially if the harm for breaking said law is minimal), at some point one must ask if the law is too incompatible with human behavior to justify enforcement or existence.

I don't think anyone "soft on illegal immigration" is against legal immigration. But they may very well be against the laws as they currently stand, because the laws are demonstrably shaped by racist intent; the national quota system used to decide people per year from each country where very much structured out of fear of a "browning" of America.

For many of these people, the legal route isn't available, or in the case of people fleeing Syria, Guatemala or Honduras, they are seeking asylum, which is legally a different route.

Yeah, that certainly tempers my views. I'm sympathetic to breaking U.S. immigration law because it's the only option for keeping one's family safe from a war zone.

I'm much less sympathetic to people breaking U.S. immigration law because they want greater economic opportunity for themselves or their children.

That said, I can't argue back to first principles why my preferred balance of virtue maximization / vice minimization is objectively better than anyone else's. So if we're being completely honest, I can't advocate even my own position in good conscience.

That's absolutely not how it works. People either have valid immigration status and/or citizenship, or they don't. There's no trick to suddenly make people "illegal".

As another commenter mentioned, the most factual way of describing that group of people is "people residing or working in the country illegally". There aren't laws against people, there are laws against what people do.

Luckily, whether you consider something racist or not has no actual impact on the usage of the term. And of course, you’re free to call a speeder an “illegal” if you want, just like apparently you’re free to call other HN users racist for using common terminology in a way you don’t like.

I give you Teen Vogue:

Why You Shouldn’t Use the Term “Illegals” Not only is it offensive, it's dehumanizing.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/why-you-shouldnt-use-the-ter...

Well-cited article with numerous references. Teen Vogue has become quite serious of late.

> whether you consider something racist or not has no actual impact on the usage of the term

Thats true

> for using common terminology in a way you don’t like.

When did it become common terminology? I am 47 years old and don't remember that term ever being used until the last presidential election as a means to vilify people of color.

Maybe I just wasn't paying attention the other 44 years?

I'm about your age and that term has been used as long as I've been alive.

I guess I should have been paying better attention then

I'm same and same.

It used to be "illegal aliens" I think? That's the shortened form.

Unfortunately any word used to describe a population that people don't like will stop being a descriptor and become a slur if it's used long enough.

NPR 2009: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112167...

CBS 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8xTJ8WCGNU

Forbes 2015: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2015/06/05/obamas-im...

The Nation 2007: https://www.thenation.com/article/what-america-owes-its-ille...

NY Times 2015:https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/magazine/the-unwelcome-re...

Brookings Institution 1996: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/why-separate-legal-illega...

Why would a racist care enough to specify the legality of their presence in the US? That doesn't even stand up to basic reasoning.

'Illegal', while possibly indelicate, gets to the root of the immigration discussion...people sidestepping the process of lawfully entering the US because it's too difficult for them or too slow for their circumstances or just impossible because they are ineligible.

Saying that everyone that's against illegal/unlawful/undocumented immigration to this country is also against immigration in general and is racist is a grotesque abuse of logic. Take a poll of people that took the long road to get to the US, I'm sure you'll find lots of 'racists' there.

> Why would a racist care enough to specify the legality of their presence in the US? That doesn't even stand up to basic reasoning.

Have you ever heard of dog whistles?

Anyways, Ive never met someone that says things like this but also opposed efforts to reduce legal immigration like the RAISE act or refugee/travel bans. As it turns out, there’s a high correlation!

Yes, I'm convinced people that hear too many dog whistles in conversation are either intellectually lazy or borderline paranoid schizophrenic. Rather than trying to engage with the person to really understand how they are thinking about something, 'dog whistles' are used to neatly package them into subhuman categories not worth consideration as peers in democracy.

It's short for the legal term "illegal alien".

An equivalent with your driving example would be "illegal speeding" (as opposed to, say, an ambulance, which can legally be given permission to speed).

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, rather than an action like speeding, hence why shortening it to just the adjective "illegals" works. It describes a state of being, just like "asian" or "programmer".

Illegal in the context of a speeder is a criminal matter. Illegal in the context of an immigrant/alien is referring to a violation of civil laws and not criminal ones. Maybe an apt comparison would be illegal CEO for those caught salary fixing.

> 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.

The term "criminal" is probably a step up. Using an epithet isn't inherently bad, but I've noticed that when an adjective becomes a nickname for a group of people it's often a method of dehumanizing them.

'hard workers' - also technically true

As is 'bipedal'. But neither of those attributes effectively circumscribe or differentiate the set of folks we're discussing.

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.

They are sort of misdemeanor plus because in addition to legal inconveniences in the US they also lead to deportation. This is something that has been vilified in the case of folks coming up from Mexico of course, but nobody gives a shit if a person that followed all the rules gets deported because of some bad luck with the lottery or their sponsor ditches them or their time is just up.

Case in point, I have a young lady on my team at work that came to the US to receive her masters in computer science, and is presently employed on a STEM OPT extension to her F1 visa. We have tried twice to get her H1-B and she hasn't been picked up. Next year will be the last try, and we're unsuccessful she will be kicked out of the US to no press or protest. She's a wonderful person and has been a true asset to my team and the company, she did everything 'right' and yet may have to leave. However if we do the exact same thing to someone that skipped all of those formalities and broke the rules, it's somehow racist and nationalist and practically a human rights violation?

I get it, calling these folks 'illegals' is a bit crass. But it's more precise than calling them 'immigrants' because it's a special case of immigrant that we're talking about, one is distinct not because of race or color or country of origin, but because of legal status.

> They are sort of misdemeanor plus because in addition to legal inconveniences in the US they also get deported. This is something that has been vilified in the case of folks coming up from Mexico of course, but nobody gives a shit if a person that followed all the rules gets deported after their time is up.

If you are still here to be deported after your time is up, you haven't followed all the rules, since leaving no later than when your time is up is, itself, a requirement of the rules.

On the other hand, while people who are concerned with the recent border crossers being denied the right to apply for asylum, or being held in humane conditions, may not be concerned about those visa overstayers who are not facing either of those problems, the people who are concerned with the leniency for those illegally present who have done nothing seriously wrong beyond immigration violations tend to be just as well inclined to visa overstayers as any other person illegally present; the distinction you suggest is not accurate.

> I consider 'illegals' to be a derogatory term used by racists

You consider wrong. Doubly wrong since race has nothing to do with it (there are illegal immigrants of all races, just as there are people of all races on all sides of the immigration debate).

> If so that is an illegal activity so maybe you are also an 'illegal'?

Within the context of driving, yes. You can be called "illegal driver" or "criminal driver" if your behavior raised to the level of a crime (e.g. something like DUI and causing a crash). But we aren't discussing driving here, so no.

> Maybe I am way off base?

Yes, you are.

> Doubly wrong since race has nothing to do with it

I can't see the gp comment, but from what you're quoting, I feel compelled to correct you.

gp doesn't say that the people who use the term "illegals" are racist "because" they say illegals. gp just says that it's a comment, in their experience, that's used by racists.

there's an important difference, do you see it?

>> Maybe I am way off base? > Yes, you are.

nah, not this time.

> gp just says that it's a comment, in their experience, that's used by racists

Technically, almost every expression imaginable could be used by somebody who is racist. Racism does not make one incapable of using language in the same way non-racist people do, so every expression can be - and usually would be - used by racists. Words "a", "and" and "the" are used by racists. Obviously, the distinction is only meaningful when the expression is exclusively or predominantly used by racists, and for a reason that it aligns with their views are racists. That, in this case, is completely false.

> nah, not this time.

Yah, this very time.

> Technically, almost every expression imaginable could be used by somebody who is racist.

you seem to be having a hard time with this. Let me paraphrase something that, if you have an open mind, might help elucidate the issue.

"I'm not saying that everyone who says, 'illegals' is racist, but an awful lot of racists like to say, 'illegals'"

> Yah, this very time.

no, you.

> you seem to be having a hard time with this

It may come as a surprise to you, but when people disagree with you, it's usually not because they don't understand the infinite wisdom of your words. It's often because they understand and think you're talking nonsense. And sometimes - like in this case - it's because you are.

> an awful lot of racists like to say, 'illegals'"

So what? Awful lot of racists also like to say "hello" and "breakfast" and "cat" and "good evening". Obviously, that doesn't make these expressions taboo. It would only be meaningful if the link went the other direction - if this designation was predominantly used by racists. So what you're doing here is trying to imply it's the case, by stating the reverse and hinting there's a casual link, but because your case for it is so weak that it would not tolerate direct confrontation, you avoid telling it directly. So that, when challenged, you can feign innocence and cry "I didn't say it's racist, I just said it's used by racist!". Taken literally, you didn't, but you words only have any meaning if that's exactly what you tried to imply without saying it directly, as to avoid being confronted and revealed as falsity. This is an insincere and I'd even say cowardly way to discuss things - casting implications without daring to stand behind them and defend them.

> So what? Awful lot of racists also like to say "hello" and "breakfast" and "cat" and "good evening".

sigh

this is the second time you've said essentially, "racists say a lot of other things too, so clearly 'illegals' isn't racist". that's not a particularly helpful or clever point.

are there non-racist people who say "illegals"? sure. do most people understand the racist connotations of the term, "illegals"? yeah, most do. does the original commenter probably understand the connotations? yeah, good bet they do.

do you? I honestly don't care.

I pose this question for you: are there other, non racially charged ways to describe someone's immigration status?

think hard.

anyway, like I said, elucidating the point only works if you have an open mind. I guess yours isn't.

cheers.

> do most people understand the racist connotations of the term, "illegals"? yeah, most do

That's called "circular arfument" - you proclaim that this term is racist and prove it by proclaiming - without any evidence - that "most people" (who?) "understand" that it is racist. What you do is just repeating your original - baseless - claim.

> do you? I honestly don't care

So, being unable to prove your point, or somehow substantiate the claim that calling acts that are agains the law "illegal" is somehow "racist" (tbh, you shouldn't blame yourself too hard for the failure - it's very hard to prove something this idiotic, but you definitely should blame yourself for proclaiming it in the first place, as you should know better) - you resort to denigrating me personally and feigning indifference to my opinion (after all the discussion) because you are so much smarter than me (and the way these smarts are revealed is by mindlessly repeating a slogan which you are unable to substantiate).

> are there other, non racially charged ways to describe someone's immigration status?

Yes, here's one: if someone immigrated legally, she's a legal immigrant. If someone immigrated illegally, she's an illegal immigrant. Nothing to do with race. See how easy it was? Of course, if you tend to reflexively call whoever disagrees with you "racist", it may become harder. But that's exactly the reason to get rid of that foolish tic.

> That's called "circular arfument" (lol, sic) - you proclaim that this term is racist and prove it by proclaiming - without any evidence - that "most people" (who?) "understand" that it is racist. What you do is just repeating your original - baseless - claim.

first, it's whom, not who.

second, i didn't claim that it's racist because people know that it's racist.

learn from google, learn from teen vogue.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/why-you-shouldnt-use-the-ter...

you bring nothing novel or new or clever to this conversation.

bye, dude. you're intellectually dishonest. even worse, you're boring.

> first, it's whom, not who.

That's the best you can do? "Dude".

> learn from teen vogue

Oh my.

No person is illegal.

I think it's fairly clear the commenter meant that they're "illegal immigrants," which approriately describes people that immigrated illegally. While the abbreviated colloquial form may not be strictly accurate on its own, it's quite reasonable to assume the full form given the context.

The words you use have an effect on how others feel and how they're perceived. The word "illegals" can have negative connotations, and it's a dehumanizing word.

The word has negative connotations because you're describing a very negative thing. If you suddenly decide to use a new word, it will also inevitably develop negative connotations.

Stephen Pinker explains it well:

https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/1994_04_03_newyo...

Thanks for mentioning this, it was definitely worth a read. For a rather more legible version for anyone else interested: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-04-06-19940962...

It has negative connotations because it describes the act that is against the law. That's literally what "illegal" means. If you think it's OK to violate the law, then the connotations would be positive, if you do not, then the negative connotations are appropriate. You can't have it both ways.

It's not due to the definition, it's because of how the word has been used. There are terms which refer to undocumented immigrants which still represent their status, but are not dehumanizing.

If a person breaks the law, it is completely correct to say they broke the law. Going out of one's way to hide that fact because stating the facts is somehow "dehumanizing" is a political propaganda exercise, which tries to present (some) laws as something insignificant and barely worth mentioning, and people that consider following these laws important as somehow irrational, and more than once in this very topic - irrational, hateful and racist. I can see why you want to go through this political exercise, but I have absolutely no reason to follow you.

In the United States, literally everyone breaks the law. Calling someone “illegal” as if their identity is defined by something done by literally every single member of society is just a thin veil over the wish to dehumanize the vast and terrifying Other.

By your logic, you are also “an illegal”, because you, too, have broken the law. Everyone is.

But you don’t use it this way. You use it exclusively to define foreigners as bad, as if the law’s opinion about a person’s actions is relevant to their identity.

Actions are illegal. People are not.

These supposed "undocumented immigrants" are not generally undocumented. Nearly all of them have documents. Of course, those documents might use your social security number.

This being the case, the situation is generally one of fraud. Some states consider all cases of identity theft to be felonies, while other states can charge the crime either way.

It's usually considered better to refer to people by adjectives rather than noun forms. It just sounds politer to imply that it's an aspect of them rather than what they are. It's a minor thing in American speech, I think.

Colloquialism

A dog whistle for...people who dislike illegal immigration?

I can’t hear dog whistles tho..

When people claim innocuous statements are really dog whistles, I find that usually indicates more about the claimant's beliefs than the original speaker's.

It's obviously the small noisy minority. Most people don't have any expectation that their employer should have anything like a coherent moral vision; they just want to do their job, get their paycheck, and go home.

Even names on a petition don't mean much - the kind of people that like to solicit for signatures on petitions are often so insufferable that you sign to make them go away and leave you in peace.

About a quarter of the company has signed the protest letter. I signed the letter just so people would stop nagging me to sign. I don’t care about ICE. I suspect there are others who got pressured into signing.

That’s amazing to me. It seems to me like creating a hostile work environment and a form of harassment, although political rallying is not a protected category, and the employer is likely hamstrung in making any sort of response.

I wonder about that, too - how far will the rabble-rousers go, if they can get away with it? Will they insist on the firing of the people who _didn’t_ sign the petition? Will they blacklist people who have ever worked with ICE in the future? Will this spread beyond github? Will we have an unelected, unaccountable group of “the woke” dictating the terms of our employment?

You expect HN to investigate the truth of individual comments?

I expect them not to delete rebuttals to outright lies

You created this account to post personal attacks like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21415586. That's obviously a bannable offence on HN, so we've banned the account.

If you're seeing abuse on HN you should take that up with us at [email protected], not come to the threads to violate the site guidelines. If your concern is the truth, there are better ways to defend it that don't violate the guidelines. If you want to smite enemies, that's not what this site is for.