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What Employee Lock-In Means At Facebook
theodp writes "In the early days of Facebook, the company would go into what CEO Mark Zuckerberg called lockdown, where no one is supposed to leave until the task at hand is done. Speaking on Saturday at Startup School 2013, CNET reports, Mark Zuckerberg remarked that the practice persists to this day. Facebook doesn't lock people in the office, but it comes "as close to that as we can legally get," Zuckerberg said to an eruption from the crowd. The lockdown isn't the first at-home-in-a-Bangladesh-garment-factory management technique Zuck's touted at Startup School. Back in 2007, Zuckerberg drew fire for advising company founders "you should only hire young people with technical expertise" if they want to be successful. And while there are no reports of Facebook hiring 9-year-old bosses yet, the LA Times reports that only young undocumented immigrants are welcome at the hackathon hosted by Zuckerberg's FWD.us next month where "tech CEO's like Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman, Drew Houston and Andrew Mason will be sitting side-by-side with undocumented youth [with technical expertise] creating tech products to help the immigration reform movement" (invitation to 'day (and night) of working')."
Why are illegal immigrants being called undocumented? The are documented, by their countries of origin. The reason they are undocumented in the US is because they are here ILLEGALLY. They have no right to claim legal status when they did not go through the proper legal process. IMO, these people are brazenly flouting our immigration laws without any fear of prosecution which only encourages more illegal immigration. This has to stop.
Illegal is illegal.
Maybe you need young people, because they are stupid enough to think that spending hours for your employer is a great way to spend the precious little free time you'll have in your life. I used to think it was cool to spend 3-4 days at a demo party just hacking away. Now I would rather sleep, exercise and keep myself in good shape without worrying about crashing and trying to make up for lack of sleep.
Conflating two stories that shouldn't be conflated: the FWD.us hackathon isn't a Facebook-employee lock-in. It's (basically) a publicity stunt designed to help / help raise awareness for immigration reform. That has nothing to do with any tyrannical measures Zuckerberg is taking as CEO.
genuinely curious. if you have time to arrest and send people out for making remarks on twitter how come undocumented(I assume that's double speak for illegally working) immigrants can hold public meetings?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Facebook's wealth demands unlimited slavery
Admitting to age discrimination are we?
and I admit to not reading the many links, but taking the article at face value (dangerous I know)
BUT
if all of it is true and accurate, it sounds like Mr. Z is a world-class asshole and is trying to bring back the dark days of robber barons building their wealth on the backs/lives of indentured servants...
Yet one more reason (like you needed another really) not to use Facebook
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
it's the employees' choices to stay and work there.
However, these kind of antics seem somewhat tyrannical or unethical to me. To a fb hater like myself (never used and never will), this is more justification to not use that site.
That's the true goal of these companies, and a big reason they're all so keen on H1B1.
These big tech fucks move into a town, drive the real estate prices sky-high so you basically have to be upper management to own a place outside the "campus", and if not then you must either live well outside the critical radius and spend at least an hour commuting (good luck with your family), or opt to live within company provided housing ( http://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/Facebook-partner-to-build-Menlo-Park-housing-4860826.php ).
But this has been done before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town. Sigh. So wearisome.
tl;dr - if you want to be a huge success in business, you need to be an a**hole
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I know of a company here where the alarm goes off at 5pm and if you're not out by 5:15pm, you are locked in for the night.
She makes not working late attractive.
...they feel compelled to catch up. Welcome to feudalism.
Immigration reform, local wage suppression, what's the difference.
As with any large company that writes code as its primary product.... Most of the people do very little even though they do long hours. At FB only a couple of core teams do most of the work and even then there are a handful key players on those teams.
No news there. :)
I would be afraid to use his services.
No, you're lying. The babies born here are all documented. The illegals know that they have to get a US birth certificate for their babies, not for the "anchor baby" as much as to get WIC. Your red herring is transparent and stinks. And no, conviction is not required for an act to be illegal; a law is.
A fine example of leadership without empathy.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Sounds like ZB figured out the truth about America and is acting upon it. The only way to hire people is to ensure that they have little ability to appeal to the American court system.
You can't handle the truth.
If I had any interest at all in working for the latest version of MySpace.com, this might be upsetting, but I don't, so who cares?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think bosses prefer hiring HB-1s and illegals because it gives them something powerful to hold over the employees head. If the employee feels secure in their life, then they are more likely to challenge the employer and stand up for reasonable rights. So, "immigration reform" to these companies is a way for them to legalize slavery while importing people whose only goal is to export as much of their paycheck back to their home countries as possible.
And seriously, employee lock-ins? Why do people put up with that crap? Is working at a social media company, which will most like be replaced by another social media company within five years, some great honor? People need to have some respect for themselves.
There's nothing in the linked articles to suggest that these "lock-ins" are any different than what many other companies do, especially start-ups, when there is a crucial problem at hand. (To me this 'necessity' sometimes indicates poor management and planning, other times perhaps it's needed). I notice that the first Google result I found isn't mentioned in the summary. It clarifies a bit what the lockdown means, apparently doesn't mean no one is allowed to leave the office or other such nonsense. The link to the Bangladeshi factory story appears to be an absurd comparison.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Intel has something similar thing where employees aren't supposed to work until the problem gets fixed. Literally the rooms are called "Dungeons" (they used to have signs on the door, but HR told them to pull it down). Everyone still calls it a dungeon though.
The dungeons pull in people from a bunch of groups, all into the same room to solve the problem. This could last for a number of days (or months), but people work extremely long hours. In general, free food isn't a perk from Intel, but during dungeons they give both lunch and dinner to keep you working.
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Facebook-Reviews-E40772.htm
according to 500 people, facebook is a nice company to work for and they all approve of zuckerberg. Thats not a lot considering facebook employs far more people than just those 500 reviewers. Facebookers: feel free to update information accordingly to we can at least attempt an objective view of this mans policies and actions as glorious leader.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I assume that's double speak for illegally working
Undocumented means exactly what it you think the word means. It means there is no documentation available to prove the person's citizenship status. If I were to lose certain important documents, I would be undocumented and I'm a US citizen. Often immigrants who are here illegally are also undocumented but undocumented does not mean illegal and illegal does not mean undocumented.
I worked for a place like that. It went out of business when all the employees got fed up, found new jobs and left.
Not stupid, but desperate. Getting a well-paid job isn't easy these times, you know.
Well paid?
If you consider all the hours, stress, and bullshit one has to put up with from billionaires who got real lucky, the pay in software development sucks.
I have a relative who is an electrician for a utility. He works less annual hours but with the storm overtime and shift differentials, he pulls in over $100K (after union dues) - AND he has a pension.
AND his job can't get off-shored.
Sure there are some late nights freezing his ass off, but at least he's PAID for it. Oh, and at 50+, he (and everyone else his age or older) hasn't "aged out" like many of us do in this industry.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
So is that why he likes illegals so much? He cannot legally lock the doors, but he can send a few border patrol cops after anyone who leaves before he says they can?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It seems completely within the realm of possibility to have the workers paid in FaceBucks, GoogleBooty, MicroCents, etc. within a few decades. These would probably start as in-world currency for the various gaming platforms hosted by these companies, but spread outward from there to purchase food and shelter at company-owned places.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
We have Cannonball Runs, where our developers and engineers work long days, enjoy company-provided, catered meals, and concierge services to help in their absence at home, and of course preems, which are financial incentives for accelerating the schedule.
It's about as far from what this asshole is doing as you can get, but we get fantastic results, and the work product is very high quality. That's why I spend the money to do it. It does cost money - about $5k/day for a team of 10 people (I refuse to call them "resources").
to pull the rest of us down with them (and I already make under the average income in the US).
CAPTCHA: commands
A big "fuck you" as I grabbed my coat and walked out.
You want a project done fast, offer incentive... "Guys let's get this done today! $5000 bonus for each of you if we get it done in the next 24 hours. He can easily afford a paltry $5K to everyone to get them to work their brains out. Sadly he is not smart enough to know that you get subpar coding from making them work like that.
Zuck is a good marketing and BS man, wish is a great CEO job...he doesnt know shit about coding or product management, but tried to act like he does.
the astroturfing... and can they witch hunt posters?
Are pretty much just a bribe to Congress and Obama to let him continue to be a white slaver. DREAM act my ass.
When there is a neighbor openly advertising just how hard it strives to keep employees happy? I made a jump myself after concluding that the technology is interesting but there is nothing I. It for me.
That fastcompany article is a prime example of how smart people who don't understand the language they use can do very stupid things.
"'One of the difficulties,' Cheng tells Fast Company, 'is the ambiguity of the English.' Say you have a user who enters the query 'photos of engineers in Mumbai.' Is that engineers who live in Mumbai, or engineers who happened to be in Mumbai at the moment a photograph was taken?"
Except it isn't ambiguous, or it isn't ambiguous in the way Cheng thought. I'm sure he's a smart person, but "photos of engineers in Mumbai" means a picture showing an engineer with Mumbai in the background (whether you can ID Mumbai or not), or it means photos that are stored in Mumbai and depict engineers. It never means photos of engineers that happen to reside in Mumbai except in the incidental sense that anyone who has lived in a place is likely to have photos of themselves in that place. That's just sloppy thinking on the part of a facebook "engineer".
As for Lockdowns...as someone who has had a hide-away bed in my office, and has slept in my car in the parking lot when a deadline loomed (and I was working in an office with a shower)...I think the very idea is asinine. I don't care whether you count the entire sprint to release, or just the 5 hour meeting, if your people think something else is more important than them being there...well either you hired the right people and they are right, or you hired the wrong people and they are right. Either way, the solution isn't to tell people they can't leave.
I'm there, dude.
Oh, wait...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Seriously. Show up at invitations to illegal aliens like this and arrest all those who are here illegally. Then fine the crap out of whoever sponsored such an event. Zuck is making money off of slave labor yet no one wants to call him out on his tactics?
Why does the noun "Illegal" always refer to a person who did not hire enough lawyers to weed through the reams of arcane paperwork and pay the fees necessary to become a legal immigrant? Shouldn't the word "illegal" also refer to those who haven't filed the proper paperwork to pay their taxes. Or when the word is said with a particular level of disgust, shouldn't the word also "Illegal" refer to people who've committed bank fraud, theft, murder, rape or other heinous crimes? Why also does it almost exclusively apply to paperwork-deficient immigrants from Mexico, particular those with much native American blood in their family tree but it almost never refers to the hundreds of thousands of lighter-skinned illegal immigrants from Ireland and other parts of Europe.
When you hear the word "Illegal" referring to a group of people, you should be thinking of Bernie Madoff, Martha Stewart, Jack Abramoff, Tycho corporation at least as often as you think of the guy who'll mow your lawn for $5/hour because it's the only thing that keeps his kids from starving.
HR makes it so we get HB1 workers that we can now work 24/7 with are new on site houseing and if they don't want to work 24/7 then they can just have there hb1 pulled and be kicked out.
It's not a slur for me. I honestly couldn't care less what race/ethnicity someone in this country is. Here's what anger me about illegal immigration:
Indeed. But the solution is not to participate in enforcing tyrannical laws anyways. Would you have returned escaped slaves to bondage? It was the law after all. Would you have helped send Jews to the camps? It was the law after all.
"Lex iniusta non est lex"
A few points. First, I don't consider our right to control who enters our borders to be tyrannical. (I do agree that there are cases where enforcing the law is immoral, as with the examples you gave.)
I'd also be more accepting of having unenforced laws on the books if it was for very brief periods. But instead what we seem to end up with is a legal code that monotonically grows. I see that as incompatible with the doctrine that "ignorance of the law is no excuse". Our legal code is so large now that we basically have ex post facto laws: the government can always find something to arrest anyone for, if they really care to. To me this is a great evil.
Let each company have its own operational style that makes it work.
shouldn't the word also "Illegal" refer to people who've committed bank fraud, theft, murder, rape or other heinous crimes?
If you prefer, but I think "criminal" or "felon" are better words. By comparison the word "illegal" is pretty mild, as it can refer to something as minor as a civil violation. Do you think we should use the milder term to refer to people who've committed bank fraud, theft, murder, rape or other heinous crimes?
What I love is the compliant media. Zuck gets free op-ed space in WaPo, but as far as I know of, no serious criticism in the media. Any half-baked columnist could rip this guy a new one. Nice lapdog - nice, nice little doggy.
It's always a sign of the weakness of a left-wing political argument when advocates for a position overtly or more subtly make opposition to their positions a symptom of or an overt act of "racism".
The debate surrounding immigration is a great example of this. If you are opposed to illegal immigration (that is, bypassing border controls, overstaying a visa, working without work permission, etc) you are increasingly labeled racist, presumably because you aren't really opposed to migrant labor, you're opposed to Latinos.
This is too bad, because I think there are a lot of ways in which easier migration from outside our borders (Latino, or otherwise) has a lot of negative consequences.
One obvious example that seldom gets mentioned is the unemployment rate among African Americans. This figure is often quite high -- 15-20% or more depending on the measure. The jobs taken by illegal immigrants are almost always low-skill, entry-level jobs, the same jobs that young, unskilled African Americans could take.
If you're concerned about African American unemployment, you should naturally be concerned about wage depression and competition for these jobs by illegal immigrants. Isn't supporting a lenient immigration policy which keeps African Americans unemployed the real racist policy?
And then there's affordable housing, health care, schools, and so on, all of which are pressured by large numbers of low-skilled immigrants.
Sure, we're all upset by the crooks in the system (although I would argue that Madoff, Stewart and Abramoff are all distractions, not the real problem), but the rich and the power structure gain by wage depression and keeping the working classes on edge through unlimited low-skilled job competition. High wages and a "seller's market" for labor actually keep pressure on the corporate elite.
What is the percentage of "Undocumented" people that would not fall into the "Illegal" category?
I am sure very few of these people lost their "important documents". There are procedures for people who have lost all documentation to recover their documents. A parent, grandparent or sibling can get you a birth certificate in most states. That can get you a social security card. Have any bills with your name on them or a bank account? These also help recover identity. I may take a month or so to get things recovered, but these people were never in the system in the first place.
The parts of my family that were not here pre-US all came here legally. As a citizen I expect all others to do the same. It is the law here. Don't like it? Go someplace else.
http://slashdot.org/story/13/10/21/1258228/facebook-isnt-accepting-new-posts-likes-comments
shouldn't the word also "Illegal" refer to people who've committed bank fraud, theft, murder, rape or other heinous crimes?
If you prefer, but I think "criminal" or "felon" are better words. By comparison the word "illegal" is pretty mild, as it can refer to something as minor as a civil violation. Do you think we should use the milder term to refer to people who've committed bank fraud, theft, murder, rape or other heinous crimes?
Even our sloppy news media usually tries to maintain a spirit of "Presumed innocence" for thieves, murderers, pedophile rapists, fraudsters and other criminals/felons. And so, they typically have the word "alleged" associated with their crime until a trial by jury. Are you saying that everyone who has been tagged as Illegal by the tea party, neo-facists, racist union thugs... has had a fair trial by jury? No, the common American usage for the word "illegal" in reference to a class of immigrants is a crutch for muddled thinking it serves the following purposes:
The lockdown isn't the first at-home-in-a-Bangladesh-garment-factory management technique Zuck's touted at Startup School. Back in 2007, Zuckerberg drew fire for advising company founders "you should only hire young people with technical expertise".
Perhaps the little Zucker just believes in exploiting the Stockholm syndrome for fun and profit.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Straw man.
Jews were legal citizens of their countries when those "laws" were passed by a dictatorship, ergo not illegal immigrants.
Slaves were also not immigrants, and could not even be considered so since they were not granted personhood in most places.
Yes the unjust law is not a law at all, and you care to say how discriminating against those who follow the proper immigration channels is just? Or are we expected to reward everyone that breaks a law?
The US have open laws regarding immigration, and yet we reward people who don't follow them.
Is it just to pass laws to punish those that follow other laws when then break them, but punish none of the ones that never followed them in the first place?
Either repeal them all or do not pass unjust laws in the first place.
And as a note Illegal is only a racial slur in a country like the USA, we have no problems calling illegal actions illegal anywhere else.
My state university now allows illegal immigrants to get in-state tuition, but legally present citizens from neighboring states cannot.
That's actually quite fair.
In most states, illegal immigrants pay an equal share in state & municipal taxes because of how the taxes are collected. Sales taxes, excise taxes (gas, etc), property taxes (even for renters, the cost is passed on), road tolls, fees (parking meters, etc), and lottery profits...these monies get collected from all residents without regard to citizenship. Under-the-table hourly labor wages are well below the threshold at which net income taxes are positive. States get tax revenue from low-income workers not when they earn money, but when they spend it.
On the other hand, the out-of-state students haven't paid jack shit in state taxes. Why should they get their education subsidized instead of the people that actually pay for it?
Every article about Facebook confirms my suspicion that Zuck channels Jack Merridew.
happen to be a poor fit for your company culture?
Wow, your company must have a pretty hard time finding sensible solutions to the problems that your real life customers have then, as being a well rounded human being with a sense of perspective is something that is pretty essential for this. I mean who'd want things like a social life or a family life or a holiday when they could be spending every waking minute of their lives making money for you? My bet is that even though you only hire young eager-to-please staff, your long term staff retention rates are quite low and that the corresponding lack of experienced "old, uncool" people means that they end up reinventing the wheel a lot, and making the same fundamental mistakes that have been made thousands of times before - things that will sooner or later start to seriously affect your bottom line.
1.) Governments don't have rights, they have powers. Only individuals have rights.
2.) Whether a particular power is tyrannical or not is often not in the power itself, but how it is exercised. Securing the border for the purpose of preventing people with malicious intent from entering the country is a valid use of that power, interfering with free association for people coming here for peacable purposes is not.
3.) Unenforced laws are a problem, but the solution is not to enforce unjust laws merely for the law's sake. Enforcement of unjust laws encourages disrespect of the citzenry for the rule of law, which is just as much a threat to social stability as inconsistent enforcement.
Wow, that's new! So a young Mark Zuckerberg *knows* the only way to succeed: only hire the young (like him). Damn I'm glad he set us all straight! Excuse me because I need to go find a 16 year old that will clearly know even more than Mark, since by extension, only those younger than him must know even more than he does.
Harvard educated billionare touts gilded age business models, film at 11.
If I am looking for an engineer to assist with a project in Mumbai and I want a picture of them, "Photos of engineers in Mumbai" would be a fine way of asking that. Absent of context, you cannot be 100% sure. I think you may have dismissed it because it is an odd search. However, consider this one: "Photos of doctors in my area". What does that mean? Does it mean photos of doctors with my area in the background? Of course not. It naturally takes the interpretation you dismissed. It does so, because you have assigned it context not contained in the sentence.
Even our sloppy news media usually tries to maintain a spirit of "Presumed innocence" for thieves, murderers, pedophile rapists, fraudsters and other criminals/felons. And so, they typically have the word "alleged" associated with their crime until a trial by jury.
That's only relevant if you're referring to a specific person. Has anyone here done that? "Illegal aliens" refers to a group of people which exist, unless you believe that no one in this country is in violation of US visa and immigration laws.
It simplifies the hundreds of different problems and circumstances applying to millions of people who may have violated one or more elements of US immigration law and lumps them into a single category of criminal
You should brush up on your immigration law - being in the country illegally is in and of itself a civil violation. It's muddled thinking for you to call them criminals - a class of people who (surprise, surprise) have violated criminal law.
everyone who has been tagged as Illegal by the tea party, neo-facists
I'm no fan of the Tea Party myself, but I wouldn't group them in with neo-fascists the way you have. That's a serious prejudice you have there.
racist union thugs
Racist union thugs are now in favor of "reform". They're now in your camp, so maybe you should tone down the name calling.
It provides a focus for the xenophobia which is at the core of nearly every successful election campaign.
Including the campaigns where the candidate advocates "reform"? You should really be careful with those generalizations, as generalizing about groups is at the heart of prejudice.
Most people behind tech startups that did well have very little understanding of why they succeeded while the dozens of companies just like them with equally talented people did not.... and their self image does not really allow for 'you got lucky, right time right place' so they come up with all sorts of rationalizations for why they are so much better then everyone else, when in reality... if you have 10 companies doing something and there is only room for 1 titan, chances are luck is going to be the deciding factor, not some special sauce.
Indeed. A nuclear warhead hitting Harvard would do more to improve the country than anything else I can think of.
OK, fine.
We will swarm every nook and cranny of this country with Homeland Security goons^H^H^H^H^Hagents to flag down anyone they think looks a little bit brown, ask them sus papeles, por favor and beat the mierda out of them when they answer in English.
We will build the Great Wall of Texas.
And you, in return, will STFU when taxes are proposed to pay for it all.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Strawman. I argued that the laws and their enforcement should be in sync. Repealing any laws we're not willing to enforce is an option as well, and far cheaper (and less draconian.)
His advice to only hire young, (implied) unmarried codes is flat out illegal in the US. It's called age discrimination.
There have been more aliens deported from the US under the current administration than under any previous administration. You really can't blame the president for not enforcing immigration laws when they're being enforced more than ever.
How do you know that they paid any tax to the state? What if they just entered the country yesterday? What if they lived in the neighboring state and just showed up in the state to go to school? What if the out-of-state student spent most of their time in-state and paid more sales tax than the illegal immigrant that showed up yesterday? Why is the illegal immigrant given the benefit of the doubt when the US citizen isn't?
My hatred of Zuckerboid has reached its maximum possible value now. You can quit posting FB stories.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Which is why they hide it behind saying the person doesn't "fit the culture".
Indeed. But the solution is not to participate in enforcing tyrannical laws anyways. Would you have returned escaped slaves to bondage? It was the law after all. Would you have helped send Jews to the camps? It was the law after all.
requiring people to go through a process to enter the country is not the same as sending people to concentration camps or condemning them to a life of brutal slavery. good plan though, invoke those images and maybe make people feel guilty about a perfectly sane law.
but just for fun, why not take that to it's logical conclusion? let's send oil tanker to ever region in the world that's poorer than the US is becoming. we will fill them up, and take them all back and unload them in the US. hundreds of millions of people. we will bring them all. including criminals, because heck, what are we going to do research each person? no time for that. we will do this until the standard of living is reduced to the point where they don't *want* to come any longer. it's only fair.
see any problem with this?
we all want to help others, but be honest about what you are willing to give up. your home? education for your children? healthcare? infrastructure like clean water and sanitation? the US isn't a magical fairy land. the systems here are already on the brink of collapse. many of our governments are already bankrupt.
The numbers involved appear to be in the millions so your analogy doesn't work.
Why does this (our?) system persist! This is such a ridiculous example of pure "capitalist" pinnacle power distribution that even I, someone who *wants* to believe that things *can* (could?) work within this system is fully swayed to believe that instead, the *only* alternative is to smash this shit and try to start over. I am retro-actively calling myself a dumb-ass! This is just so egregious - no rational person could defend it. One 29yr old "kid" has this much unrestricted, un-audited power? How many 50yr old Dick Cheney wanna-bees are there out there in concert? Power makes you a dick.
it is all free market is it not?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slave
Casteism
Outlaw is the best, most descriptive, term. It contains in it the underlying premise that the law is a social contract. And those who choose not to abide by this social contract are outside of its protections.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Even our sloppy news media usually tries to maintain a spirit of "Presumed innocence" for thieves, murderers, pedophile rapists, fraudsters and other criminals/felons. And so, they typically have the word "alleged" associated with their crime until a trial by jury.
That's only relevant if you're referring to a specific person. Has anyone here done that? "Illegal aliens" refers to a group of people which exist, unless you believe that no one in this country is in violation of US visa and immigration laws.
I don't think anyone is pretending we'll jam 10,000,000+ allegedly illegal aliens through our court system so who exactly are we talking about with the sneering accusation "illegal?"
It simplifies the hundreds of different problems and circumstances applying to millions of people who may have violated one or more elements of US immigration law and lumps them into a single category of criminal
You should brush up on your immigration law - being in the country illegally is in and of itself a civil violation. It's muddled thinking for you to call them criminals - a class of people who (surprise, surprise) have violated criminal law.
Do you really understand US immigration law? Some of the visas granted this year were applied for as long ago as 1988. Do you know how many changes have been made to US immigration law in the past 25 years? Have any of these been reviewed as ex-post facto laws?
I have a friend who was born in the US of Australian parents but because he sensibly chose to go to university at Oxford UK which is half the cost of the cheapest American state college. INS flagged him and now he can never return to his birthplace to visit his friends and family. BTW he is a tech genius who would have qualified under H1B if he were not already banned from contributing to America's future.
everyone who has been tagged as Illegal by the tea party, neo-facists
I'm no fan of the Tea Party myself, but I wouldn't group them in with neo-fascists the way you have. That's a serious prejudice you have there.
racist union thugs
Racist union thugs are now in favor of "reform". They're now in your camp, so maybe you should tone down the name calling.
Of course they're in favor of it. As I said, xenophobia is always popular. Even this "reform" abolishes the green-card lottery and militarizes our borders.
It provides a focus for the xenophobia which is at the core of nearly every successful election campaign.
Including the campaigns where the candidate advocates "reform"? You should really be careful with those generalizations, as generalizing about groups is at the heart of prejudice.
Says where exactly?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Would dictate that the first arrivals own an empty (truly empty) land and can call themselves Native.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.