British tourist detained by US authorities for 10 days over visa issue

You don’t want people to come in for 6 months, work below minimum wage and then take all that cash abroad without paying taxes. That would be a bigger drain on the economy than the supposed waste of govt resources.

Mmm, she’s getting the whole border patrol indefinite incarceration oubliette treatment, it’s not going to take long to rack up more cost than your hypothetical taxes on 6mo @ <=7.25/hr.

But sure, if the ‘tourists’ are working for a company en masse, I can see how that could be a problem. The feds will probably do better going after the company, in my estimation. For some reason they don’t seem to do that very often.

Self-employment or bartering (as happened here), well, that doesn’t make sense to me to prosecute.

You’re looking at one case and arguing “one person couldn’t hurt much”. But that argument could be made for a million cases individually. But together, that will amount to a lot. And it’s not just taxes, those are wages another citizen could be making. We have work visas, which already face a lot of opposition. Why should we then be okay with tourists working and taking up American jobs?

>6 months

>work below minimum wage

>all that cash

~$6000?