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> came to work jobs no one else would take This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an

by Kadin 10y ago

> came to work jobs no one else would take This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop. So the fact that jobs that "no one else would take" exist and are being taken by illegal immigrants isn't a good thing. If you're in favor of expanded immigration, making that claim doesn't help your case. It substantiates the case that anti-immigration proponents have always made, which is that immigrants take the bottom out of the labor market and help keep salaries down. After all, if nobody would take a job doing some particularly onerous job at a pittance per hour, then the employer would have to pay more, or automate, or find a more efficient way of doing the job. Refusing to do these jobs is the correct response when they are clearly undercompensated. There are lots of people in the legal labor market who do terribly unpleasant, physically strenuous, or frankly dangerous jobs, but they typically (outside of illegal or exploitative markets) do them for reasonable wages. Someone who SCUBA dives in raw sewage or nuclear waste, for instance, is probably going to demand a fair compensation for the unpleasantness of the job. The same should be true with people who work in slaughterhouses or picking strawberries or tarring asphalt roofs. The narrative that "Americans just won't do" certain jobs is one that is created by cheapskate, exploitative employers who don't want to pay the market rate for particularly ugly jobs. Parroting it is water-carrying for these exploitative industries.

hackuser 10y ago
>> came to work jobs no one else would take > If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take Typically, that statement also refers to jobs that are perfectly legal, but most Americans wouldn't take anyway. For example, many of the experienced people reading this wouldn't drive a cab, deliver pizzas, work as unskilled construction labor, a dishwasher or a janitor if they became unemployed. They'd continue to look for their next IT job. And they'd be choosy about that - not selling computers at Best Buy, for example. (I'm not putting down those jobs; personally I respect any work.)
- forthefuture 10y ago
  It's just not true that Americans wouldn't take these jobs. If Americans won't take jobs at $2 an hour that doesn't mean Americans are big assholes who leave food on the table, it means that companies are big assholes that want to profit seek at the cost of legal employment. If you actually noticed a shortage of employees in these jobs, their salaries would necessarily go up to attract more. This is the natural process of the labor market.
  - lt06u6xu7v 10y ago
    I live in a house with a lawn. I don't like maintaining it, but I'm required to. I looked into the cost of having it done by a legitimate service, and found that the least I could pay is about $100 to have it serviced twice a month. That's not worth it to me, so I continued maintaining it myself, begrudgingly. Then I heard around the neighborhood that there's a guy who will touch it up every weekend for $50 a month. Miguel does a really good job. I didn't know my hedges could look this good. I didn't know the rosebushes were supposed to be cut at a 45 degree angle. The way I see it, everyone is better off here. I don't have to mow the lawn anymore. Miguel is better off than he was in Mexico. My $50 is going to the real economy instead of sitting in some account inflating the price of some shitty bond. This transaction is raising global GDP, improving global unemployment, creating consumer surplus, lowering the global Gini coefficient, and raising everyone's utility. What's the problem?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  I've done almost all of those things before (general maintenance rather than construction, and I've never driven a cab) -- including retail sales at an electronics chain (Radio Shack before Best Buy was the thing) -- and would again if I didn't have better prospects elsewhere (with my experience and expectations of the future labor market, I don't expect to need to do any of those things again, but that's a different thing than being unwilling to consider it if there was a need.) I suspect that's not all that uncommon here (well, maybe not having done as many of the less-skilled jobs you talk about, but not being unwilling if it was genuinely the best prospect.)
EGreg 10y ago
I disagree, on liberal and humanitarian grounds. These people make the risky and grueling trip to the US and try to make it as an illegal immigrant, for a reason: they feel the alternative is worse. They'd rather be picking crops and remitting money to their family back home, doing the jobs Americans don't do. You should be blaming the drug war that caused the Sinaloa cartel and others to take over entire cities, and resort to violence we now know from ISIS. It's a bit like blaming the Koch brothers for hiring convicts for jobs because the convicts would be happy with less. When properly you should be blaming all the other employers whose refusal to hire convicts leads to them CHOOSING to take these jobs. In short, even though I am a liberal, I recognize that these arguments about "exploitation" are myopic. They don't look 1 step beyond the "exploiter" to see whatconditions make people CHOOSE to be "exploited". Always, the real fix is to fix the conditions at large, not the employer. So it is with the jobs that "no one wants". I would rather Mexicans come and do them for less, and American citizens get freed up to study other subjects and get higher paying jobs. In fact I'd advocate for taxing 20-30% of the money saved from hiring overseas workers and automating jobs away and redistributing it as basic income on the federal level. That would help transition our economy from the one we had 20 years ago to one where aggregate demand for human labor has droppd by 10x.
redwood 10y ago
While I see what you're saying, it's disingenuous with respect to American history, to pretend the nation has ever not aggressively brought people in to work "who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool"
imagist 10y ago
> This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop. Agreed. There was a pretty good article on this in N+1 magazine a few months back that I found insightful enough to copy down: > Both American and Mexican labor are cheaper for being divided, and there is no obvious reason to believe that more labor laws, like raising the minimum wage, will change the fact if there remains a surplus of undocumented workers to whom these laws technically apply, though in practice they are unenforced. The real wage, calculated as the average rate paid to documented and undocumented workers alike, explains Trump's rise more than his virulent racism does. Racism is a side effect of a regime that keeps labor laws on the books only to look the other way when millions of brown people are subjected to conditions far beneath these standards. > The wall isn't racist; the border is racist. The wall is an effort to force a broader recognition of the privileges the border grants to professionals, who are the primary beneficiaries of American immigration and trade policy, and to redistribute some of its racist benefits downward. The only solution to this problem is to raise the price of labor power in Mexico, and then everywhere else. But given the limited political horizon of the professional left, for whom a higher minimum wage for American citizens is the best that can be hoped for, perhaps the unemployed people of Indiana can be forgiven for thinking that the wall is more realistic.
brokenmachine 10y ago
Excellent post.

by Kadin 10y ago

hackuser 10y ago

>> came to work jobs no one else would take > If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take Typically, that statement also refers to jobs that are perfectly legal, but most Americans wouldn't take anyway. For example, many of the experienced people reading this wouldn't drive a cab, deliver pizzas, work as unskilled construction labor, a dishwasher or a janitor if they became unemployed. They'd continue to look for their next IT job. And they'd be choosy about that - not selling computers at Best Buy, for example. (I'm not putting down those jobs; personally I respect any work.)

forthefuture 10y ago
It's just not true that Americans wouldn't take these jobs. If Americans won't take jobs at $2 an hour that doesn't mean Americans are big assholes who leave food on the table, it means that companies are big assholes that want to profit seek at the cost of legal employment. If you actually noticed a shortage of employees in these jobs, their salaries would necessarily go up to attract more. This is the natural process of the labor market.
- lt06u6xu7v 10y ago
  I live in a house with a lawn. I don't like maintaining it, but I'm required to. I looked into the cost of having it done by a legitimate service, and found that the least I could pay is about $100 to have it serviced twice a month. That's not worth it to me, so I continued maintaining it myself, begrudgingly. Then I heard around the neighborhood that there's a guy who will touch it up every weekend for $50 a month. Miguel does a really good job. I didn't know my hedges could look this good. I didn't know the rosebushes were supposed to be cut at a 45 degree angle. The way I see it, everyone is better off here. I don't have to mow the lawn anymore. Miguel is better off than he was in Mexico. My $50 is going to the real economy instead of sitting in some account inflating the price of some shitty bond. This transaction is raising global GDP, improving global unemployment, creating consumer surplus, lowering the global Gini coefficient, and raising everyone's utility. What's the problem?
dragonwriter 10y ago
I've done almost all of those things before (general maintenance rather than construction, and I've never driven a cab) -- including retail sales at an electronics chain (Radio Shack before Best Buy was the thing) -- and would again if I didn't have better prospects elsewhere (with my experience and expectations of the future labor market, I don't expect to need to do any of those things again, but that's a different thing than being unwilling to consider it if there was a need.) I suspect that's not all that uncommon here (well, maybe not having done as many of the less-skilled jobs you talk about, but not being unwilling if it was genuinely the best prospect.)

EGreg 10y ago

I disagree, on liberal and humanitarian grounds. These people make the risky and grueling trip to the US and try to make it as an illegal immigrant, for a reason: they feel the alternative is worse. They'd rather be picking crops and remitting money to their family back home, doing the jobs Americans don't do. You should be blaming the drug war that caused the Sinaloa cartel and others to take over entire cities, and resort to violence we now know from ISIS. It's a bit like blaming the Koch brothers for hiring convicts for jobs because the convicts would be happy with less. When properly you should be blaming all the other employers whose refusal to hire convicts leads to them CHOOSING to take these jobs. In short, even though I am a liberal, I recognize that these arguments about "exploitation" are myopic. They don't look 1 step beyond the "exploiter" to see whatconditions make people CHOOSE to be "exploited". Always, the real fix is to fix the conditions at large, not the employer. So it is with the jobs that "no one wants". I would rather Mexicans come and do them for less, and American citizens get freed up to study other subjects and get higher paying jobs. In fact I'd advocate for taxing 20-30% of the money saved from hiring overseas workers and automating jobs away and redistributing it as basic income on the federal level. That would help transition our economy from the one we had 20 years ago to one where aggregate demand for human labor has droppd by 10x.

redwood 10y ago

While I see what you're saying, it's disingenuous with respect to American history, to pretend the nation has ever not aggressively brought people in to work "who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool"

imagist 10y ago

> This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop. Agreed. There was a pretty good article on this in N+1 magazine a few months back that I found insightful enough to copy down: > Both American and Mexican labor are cheaper for being divided, and there is no obvious reason to believe that more labor laws, like raising the minimum wage, will change the fact if there remains a surplus of undocumented workers to whom these laws technically apply, though in practice they are unenforced. The real wage, calculated as the average rate paid to documented and undocumented workers alike, explains Trump's rise more than his virulent racism does. Racism is a side effect of a regime that keeps labor laws on the books only to look the other way when millions of brown people are subjected to conditions far beneath these standards. > The wall isn't racist; the border is racist. The wall is an effort to force a broader recognition of the privileges the border grants to professionals, who are the primary beneficiaries of American immigration and trade policy, and to redistribute some of its racist benefits downward. The only solution to this problem is to raise the price of labor power in Mexico, and then everywhere else. But given the limited political horizon of the professional left, for whom a higher minimum wage for American citizens is the best that can be hoped for, perhaps the unemployed people of Indiana can be forgiven for thinking that the wall is more realistic.

brokenmachine 10y ago

Excellent post.