I'm not sure if they are "officially" illegal, but they are most likely waiting on an Asylum or Immigration hearing.

Seems like you've jumped from "they only speak spanish" to, "there's a very high chance that they're here illegally".

> "they only speak spanish" to, "there's a very high chance that they're here illegally"

Because you cannot get a Work Visa to work for DoorDash or Uber Eats, nor are most Central Americans eligible for Diversity Visas (excluding Guatemalans and Nicaraguans), nor is it family reunification as that has financial assistance requirements, nor are students on student visas legally allowed to work gig work roles.

That only leaves Asylees waiting on immigration hearings (Venezolanos, Colombianos) or TPS (Honduras, El Salvador) - which isn't illegal immigration in formal terms.

While TPS is a legally protected form of immigration, as the kid of immigrants who had to wait 16 years just to get a Green Card and were ineligible for a number of social service programs as naturalization includes proof of income sustainability, it grinds my gears because millions of immigrants have to prove employment or financial feasibility to come here.

There's a reason why Latiné and Asian American voters saw a significant shift to Trump in 2024 (not me - dislike his admin - but I get where those swing voters were coming from).

There needs to be immigration reform, but I absolutely don't have sympathy for economic migrants from Central America gumming up the works for an Afghan or Burmese asylee who will now get deported to countries in the midst of civil wars. And our inability to do so in the Biden admin is what allowed Trump to win in 2024.

> They could be on spouse visas, they could be natural-born citizens, born on american soil, but still haven't learned english. They could have been born to an american-citizen-parent abroad, making them american citizens.

Absolutely, but the population of Salvadoran Americans growing from 710,000 to 2,500,000 and the population of Honduran Americans growing from 240,000 to 1,100,000 in 20 years, despite El Salvador's population remaining stagnant (Honduras's grew significantly over 20 years).

While not every worker is undocumented or abusing the TPS program, the cases you mentioned above cannot account for that scale of growth for a community.

I sympathize as a 1.5 gen immigrant, but at some point it does feel like a slap in the face when there are millions of us who spent decades stuck in immigration limbo due to visa backlogs AND were inelligible for social services like SNAP, free school lunches, etc as those could disqualify you from naturalization.

And that's why a significant portion of Latiné and Asian Americans flipped in 2024.

I really appreciate this response, thank you. I still think you're making some assumptions about quite a lot of people, eg, a friend of an asylum seekers might join an app together where both friends have vastly different legal situations.

Agreed about the lack of immigration reform from Biden's camp being a significant factor towards Latiné swing voters. DACA has always left me with a feeling that, while it was amazing in letting many folk live safely and able to fulfill themselves, it felt like the patchwork that would lead to zero action, followed by disaster. And it feels like the disaster is manifesting its head.

> I still think you're making some assumptions about quite a lot of people, eg, a friend of an asylum seekers might join an app together where both friends have vastly different legal situations

Absolutely! My heuristic is lossy, and the case you provide is probably happening.

> DACA has always left me with a feeling that, while it was amazing in letting many folk live safely and able to fulfill themselves, it felt like the patchwork that would lead to zero action, followed by disaster

Yep. I was working on the Hill for the Ds during DACA and immigration reform.

I had high hopes that we could have found a happy path to help humanize the immigration process, give documented status to law abiding individuals who lacked that, and prosecute and remove the minority of bad actors who give us immigrants (documented and undocumented) a bad reputation.

Sadly, neither the Rs (wanted to dunk on Obama 2) or the Ds cared enough because, to quote the LegAide who I reported to "immigrants can't vote", and this festered into the horrible situation that now exists.

We could have used DACA as a framework to build a more streamlined and ethical legal immigration process, but no one cared.

And so I became a jaded and very well compensated techie

Most of them are even on F1 visa working on someone else account. I know because many of indian students do that in NY and I used to ask them when I give tips.

Yep! And that's technically a violation of their F1 requirements.

1099 work is not allowed for F1 holders.

Agreed, it’s not allowed and is gross violation of F1 requirement. Thats the reason they purchase account and give like 30% of income to person who sells doordash account. Many of them work at gas stations and motels, which is kinda sad. TBH, they don’t have many options because I’m sure most can’t afford tuition fees.

I wish the U.S. government would let them work 20 hours outside of university jobs, since most universities can’t provide enough work for them. The government should also ensure students have enough funds to study in the U.S.—for example, by checking their bank balance for the entire year, not just one day.

> the U.S. government would let them work 20 hours outside of university jobs, since most universities can’t provide enough work for them

They don't have to work university jobs.

They need to work for an employer who will file a CPT in conjunction with the university with USCIS. 1099 employment isn't meant for that.