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?
I’ll say this again, there’s no such thing as a labour shortage.
There’s an infinite demand for labour by companies, the only thing preventing them from hiring is what people are willing to work for.
Just imagine it this way, if a company offered a million jobs at $1 per hour, but couldn’t fill them. Is that a labour shortage or just a stupid company?
Companies who can’t sell their product/service while paying the wages required to fill the positions are supposed to fail and close. Freeing up any workers they have attracted to work for companies who can fill that.
Companies failing this way isn’t bad. It’s literally how the economic system we are using works.
I wouldn’t say there’s no such thing as a labor shortage, we just don’t really have one now and haven’t for a while. It’s like saying there’s no such thing as a food shortage because in periods of high demand you can always just pay exponentially more money and get it.
If the rate at which labor costs are rising far outstrips the rate at which demand is growing across an industry, not just a business, that’s a sign that the supply of workers is lagging behind the demand growth. Usually seen when there’s a time lag between when demand can start to rise and people from other sectors can move over, like in medical fields or fields with high technical requirements.
It’s still not the workers responsibility to take lower wages to keep a business afloat, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been times when it’s been legitimately infeasible to fill a position.
Businesses and in some cases governments just need to be forward thinking and give incentive to start training for the career before demand starts to outstrip supply.
Smart places with nurse shortages will do stuff like pay for your training in exchange for a set number of years working for them at a market wage.Well. It kind of is bad, when those businesses are, for instance, farms. Or factories producing food. Imagine, if you will, a scenario where people working in the fields picking whatever suddenly had to be paid at least minimum wage (and probably a lot more, because that works sucks), rather than a piece rate. Productivity would probably drop–no incentive to work yourself to death anymore–but costs would rise. Those costs would have to be passed on to consumers, and that would ripple across the entire economy in a big way.
That’s not bad. Costs are supposed to rise to match the supply with the demand. That’s literally how this all works.
These jobs should be automated out of existence. Every time the cost goes up that becomes more and more viable.
These jobs should be automated out of existence.
Okay, class traitor.
That is nice economic theory.
The reality is only small entities will close and will be absorbed by the bigger companies that can afford to shift production to other countries and prices will go up because they can. The only reason why they produce locally is because of subsidies and illegal labor.
There is no economic incentive to pay a desirable wage domestically when you can exploit the workers of another country and make more money.
If it requires illegal labor now, it will be offshore if illegals(and “accidentally” the wrong color people) are deported.
Back when GWB was president, he supported a guest-worker program.
As We Tighten Controls At The Border, We Must Also Address The Needs Of America’s Growing Economy. The rule of law cannot permit unlawful employment of millions of undocumented workers in the United States. Many American businesses, however, depend on hiring willing foreign workers for jobs that Americans are not doing.
To Provide A Lawful Channel For Employment That Will Benefit Both The United States And Individual Immigrants, The President Has Called For The Creation Of A Temporary Worker Program. Such a program will serve the needs of our economy by providing a lawful and fair way to match willing employers with willing foreign workers to fill jobs that Americans have not taken.
The Program Must Be Truly Temporary. Participation should be for a limited period of time, and the guest workers must return home after their authorized period of stay. Those who fail to return home in accordance with the law should become permanently ineligible for a green card and for citizenship.
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?
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.
jobs that Americans are not doing.
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.
rich white Wholefoods shoppers won’t complain about the price of strawberries.
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.
Why do you think they want to force women to make babies so badly?
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They’ll just enslave the non-white, -straight, -Christians (who aren’t uberwealthy). It’s what Jesus would want.
I think it’s amusing that you believe Trump supporters are capable of reason. They are a brainwashed cult, and they take their orders from Fox News.
I think is exceedingly hilarious that you think the tomatoes corn peaches and the rest are going to pick themselves and follow the Mexicans,. Peruvians, Argentinians, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans and many more South.
It’s just going to rot in the fields just like last time this happened when Trump took office.
I meant factories. They can be shut down.
I was agreeing with you and stating that food production sectors would be in a immediate crisis. Since this is America, we wouldn’t have starvations so much as the prices of food would rapidly increase again. Labor jobs eventually would migrate to other economies. I agree.
You’re drastically overestimating how much of America’s food is grown in America…
Almost half the food grown in America just flat out is never eaten:
Frankly if half never makes it out of the field, it’s not that different.
But that still wouldn’t happen, the vast majority of migrant laborers are here working legally. We’d lose some, but nowhere near what you and OP are acting like. Normally it would result in higher wages for legal migrant workers. Which would increase the amount coming up for it.
With trump tho (even Biden) they want to shut down all border crossing at the drop of a hat. That would have a noticable effect.
“It would also give me, as president, the emergency authority to shut down the border until it can get back under control,” Biden said at South Carolina’s “First in the Nation” dinner. “If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/can-biden-really-shut-border-rcna136139
it’s one of the almost uncountable reasons Biden was likely going to lose to trump, they agree on too much and are too similar.
Tell me you’ve never worked on a farm in less words next time.
https://agamerica.com/blog/the-impact-of-the-farm-labor-shortage/
Literally grew up on one that had been in my family for generations…
Lol. Your link is a group arguing for subsidies for corpo farms
I worked in the fields picking tomatoes as a teenager and I went to school with the migrant agra workers children that I would pick the tomatoes with in the summer. There are a few farmers in my family. . What kind of farm? How has finances been the last 10 years? Do you have money to pay two to three times per bushel?
Wot?
Farmer s have worse margins than most restaurants. Most farmers live season to season. Get large loans to be able to repair their machinery and purchase seed and then after the harvest that money that they make is immediately paid back into that system. If there is a mass deportation of cheap farm labor than most, farmers will not be able to economically afford to pay higher costs for that labor.
I understand. My comment was just for the
tomatoes corn peaches and the rest are going to pick themselves and follow the Mexicans
part
I think they meant the agriculture won’t flow to where the workers are.
EDIT: Read it backwards and amended my comment.
I wish Democrats at the convention would’ve made the fact loud and clear that without undocumented immigrants, grocery prices would soar. In fact in every respect, these immigrants have a net-positive contribution to our economy while committing less crime than white American citizens.
While true, they also don’t vote. I think in the past democrats have courted immigration as a proxy for the Hispanic vote, but it’s never materialized. It might be the better play politically to ignore the issue.
That’s a fair point. Considering I recently explained to someone else recently that at this 11th hour before the election we can’t expect to shift public opinion on the issues, merely carve the largest coalition out of where the electorate stands at present, then I guess I’ll eat my words. Hopefully this narrative gains traction over the next “activist” cycle where we attempt to actually influence public opinion following the election.
Republican inroads with the Hispanic population is sad. It seemed to initially begin out of Cuban expats, but now their rhetoric has picked up with the southwest population. So sad to see, for there is so much misinformation that they’re ultimately kicking the ladder out from behind their own (or parents, grandparents’) journeys.
we can’t expect to shift public opinion on the issues, merely carve the largest coalition out of where the electorate stands at present
exactly. we changed dance partners once (a needed change - biden was likely to give trump a squeaker victory) and now we kinda have to dance with the “2nd one we done brung”.
wish special interest money had not knocked off progressives in the primary. just have to hope that remaining progressive voices has some amount of backchannel influence and I think there is cause for that hope.
As a California resident I can tell you the only white people working in those fields are the owners and supervisors. The immigrants and undocumented are much of the reason a head of lettuce doesn’t cost $8. And this kind of work is so hard nobody else wants to do it. Early hours, cold in the morning, hot sun in the afternoon, the only shelter is when you’re taking a break, a lot of stooping and bending.
Absolutely. There’s a fine line between praising them and relying on their frankly exploited labor. Overall, these are some of the hardest working people I’ve had the privilege of knowing. Frankly far more hard working than the typical maga trash in my parts.
Prison labor. And I guarantee minor offenses will suddenly be years in jail working farms.
Project 2025 plans to throw millions in jail.
Minor offences that lead to jail time, which gets extended indefinitely due to minor infractions or serious infractions cause by prison culture.
It kills me that this kind of mindset exists that would welcome the circumstances you describe. At the end of the day, it’s so much simpler and cheaper to just pay people what they’re worth.
Paying people appropriately doesn’t buy yachts with crew decks.
It doesn’t take that much imagination to figure out a system where rich assholes can have their yachts without putting millions of people in slavery. But of course the cruelty is the point.
They could have yachts, but they would be smaller and less impressive to people with smaller yachts
Slavery is legal for prisoners so that’s unfortunately quite viable.
Republicans plan on removing the middle class entirely, so the answer is you.
Fun fact, depending on the year surveyed, in several states the top most common position held by immigrants are Nurse.
And they work hard while being exploited and underpaid by corporate hospitals that dangle citizenship in front of them.
You sure picked a great place to ask!
