There are only 2 million unemployed Americans right now. Most of the illegal immigrants have jobs and fill in the gaps, such as working on farms and factories. If the 20 million illegal immigrants are deported, want that create a massive laborer shortage? Won’t the work follow the workers to Mexico?
Back when GWB was president, he supported a guest-worker program.
There was bipartisan support for this sort of thing back then, but it didn’t pass.
I’ve always been confused by VISAs that disallow application for permanent residence. This seems like a bad faith gesture on the government’s part. You’re setting folks up for failure because life happens.
What if we allow individuals to apply for residence regardless of VISA type and incentivize abandoning the opportunity by returning a security deposit of sorts?
Ever stop to ask why Americans arent doing those jobs? We have Americans that embalm dead bodies, clean sewers, and flip burgers. Is it true that we can’t find a few college kids willing to spend their summer out in the sun picking fruit? Ah wait a minute… perhaps Americans won’t do those jobs _for shit wages, no benefits, no holiday pay, no sick time, no 401k, no workman’s comp, no grievance process, no nothing. Maybe the companies that hire illegal immigrants are quite happy with the status quo. Maybe we need those immigrants so that rich white Wholefoods shoppers won’t complain about the price of strawberries.
If the USA can get foreign workers willing to do those jobs for very low wages, paying Americans a lot more money to do them seems like a waste. I think the situation is similar to the outsourcing of American manufacturing to other countries. The main difference (other than the fact that one involves sending jobs elsewhere and the other one involves bringing workers here) is that the move to a post-industrial economy hurt those Americans who worked in industry even as it made the average American better off, whereas Americans already don’t work in agriculture so a guest-worker program would maintain the status quo there while restoring the rule of law.
Do you think middle class and working class people don’t shop at Whole Foods?
Do you think non-white people don’t shop there either?
Do you think they don’t already complain about fruit costs?
Do you think they have nowhere else to shop? Farmer’s markets?
Most of what you said is 100% correct, but Whole Foods doesn’t grow any strawberries. They are bad for other reasons, but supposedly a nice place to work. Figure out who you’re mad at and compose yourself. (Hint: minimum wage increase)
Rising food prices don’t just affect poor people, they affect poor people far more than they affect rich people. After all, a person can only eat so much no matter how rich he is.
That doesn’t matter if minimum wage goes up. Like you said, a person can only eat so much. Rising prices are not a problem if wages (especially minimum wage) increase faster than inflation.
I don’t think you’re taking the price hikes seriously enough. Look how lemmy bitches non-stop about grocery prices. Imagine if we had to actually pay agricultural workers. And it ain’t the rich people going to suffer. Poverty is expensive.
Also, most farmers are living hand-to-mouth. They take loans every year for seed, repairs, new equipment, etc., all to bet their crop profits them. Rinse and repeat, and one bad year might cost your home and land. Some might say that take is crap and point to megacorps like Tyson. Megacorps aren’t what I see traveling the countryside. Riding the Southern highways, I see thousands of small farms. I see broken gear and collapsed structures than can’t be removed because of the cost.
Excellent reply! But no, even trying to explain a conservative take on lemmy, even if you don’t personally believe it, is going to get you buried. There’s one guy on here that’s an outspoken conservative, and while I usually disagree, he’s well spoken and often gives me food for thought. Swear to god people follow him around and down vote his posts, no matter how sane. The man can literally post a one-sentence fact and get down voted.
I’m sure we call all agree that the legal paths to immigration are a complete clusterfuck. And we all agree they should become legal residents and workers, or so we say. Conservatives in particular go on and on with, “I just want them to obey the law, come here legally.” No arguments here!
My wife has been in America about 5 years, 2 of those married to another American, seems like she would be good to go. Right now she’s struggling to get her 10-year green card, which in her case should be a rubber stamp, but no. Heard her this morning talking to INS (or some such agency), begging, pleading and arguing to get some action. She very mild mannered, but I heard her complain for a new case worker because she was spinning wheels. The reply was that they don’t have the staffing, more on that later.
Trying to bring her son over from the Philippines should be easy enough. He’s educated, no criminal record, all that. Given that she’s here legally, married to an American and we have a place for him (own our home), this should be easy enough. Don’t even know where we’re at with that, but I expect it to take years and years of waiting and red tape. You mail a form, wait 4-6 months, get forced to do it over because they didn’t like some tiny detail or want information that wasn’t asked for in the first place. Rinse and repeat.
Problem is, we don’t want immigrants here legally so we under fund the services and pile on the obstructions. Illegal immigrants are the modern day answer to slavery. If they were legal, we’d have to pay them real money and several sectors of the economy would collapse, or at best, prices would go through the roof. People most often point to agriculture, but health care and other services would suffer.
Wife supervised a crew of Mexicans at a large beach hotel. None of them were legal, not one, yet they worked through some sketchy service that took a major chunk of their pay. We went kayaking with a Honduran friend of hers. Guy can’t speak English so she related his situation*. Might be off a bit, but he was getting paid something like $17/hr. After fees and other scams, he brought home $12, and had to pay taxes on the $17. Sounds like something out of The Jungle, systemically holding immigrants down.
So what’s the incentive to go with a sane plan such as you outlined? The GOP loses a major talking point if the situation is fixed and the Democrats would get blamed for spiking prices. There are other factors such as whites becoming a minority in the coming decades, freaks some people out, freaked me a bit when I read that in the 90s. For us old folks, we remember very different demographics. (100 comments to follow calling me a racist.) For me anyway, it’s not racism, it’s change that’s a little weird. If that change is a tad uncomfortable for a liberal, consider how a conservative sees it. Rejection of change is a strong emotion in the conservative mind, just how they’re wired.
* And that’s a fucking problem. Love this guy, looking forward to taking him out again, but immigrants like him aren’t doing themselves any favors by refusing to integrate. Ask my wife about her crew at the beach. She said they all refuse to learn English and are highly insular, snotty in fact. Not winning hearts and minds here people.