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1. There is no clear evidence that illegal immigration has a meaningful influence on wages. Undocumented people mostly do jobs Americans refuse to do. For the p

by gizmo 9y ago

1. There is no clear evidence that illegal immigration has a meaningful influence on wages. Undocumented people mostly do jobs Americans refuse to do. For the past 30 years wages haven't kept up with productivity growth, I'm sure you've seen the charts. Meanwhile expenses for housing, education and healthcare have exploded. Framing immigration as the primary cause of economic stagnation is wrong, because it is a minor influence at most. The way Trump talked about immigration was transparently racist, and it's the same Southern Strategy rhetoric we've seen time and time again. 2. Voters didn't choose Trump just because "he acknowledged issues". This election was a referendum on race, and that's what got Trump in office. See for instance https://www.thenation.com/article/economic-anxiety-didnt-make-people-vote-trump-racism-did/ https://www.thenation.com/article/economic-anxiety-didnt-mak...

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
1. I didn't say illegal immigration was a major cause of low wages, but it definitely does have an effect, especially among lower class workers. You say "Undocumented people mostly do jobs Americans refuse to do," but the issue is that Americans refuse to do it for minimum wage. Why would someone do backbreaking labor for near minimum wage and no benefits when they can work at a gas station making more? For Americans to do those jobs, wages would have to go up. Corporations would be forced to do so if illegal immigration didn't keep wages down. 2. That site that you linked to is ridiculous. They measure racism by peoples' beliefs in self-determination and whether or not illegal immigrants take jobs. Which they do. If there are 10 million illegal immigrants in a country of 300 million doing lower class work, and those people aren't equally distributed across the country, you can bet there will be pockets of land where lower class wages are suppressed. And you can bet that, within those areas impacted, views towards illegal immigrants will be more negative.
- jakelazaroff 9y ago
  At the core of your argument is this premise: > Corporations would be forced to do so if illegal immigration didn't keep wages down. But no one is forcing corporations to hire undocumented immigrants over people authorized to work here; in fact, they're pressured not to. It's illegal! That's why "illegal immigration" is cast as a racist issue: it's often a hand-wavey dog whistle blaming people of color for economic issues while absolving (generally white-owned) businesses of any responsibility.
patrickg_zill 9y ago
1. If H1Bs are shown to have depressed wages of computer programmers etc., why would it not be logical to expect illegals to depress wages? If there were 12 million fewer people in the USA (the laughably low "official" number of illegals in the country), would demand for housing be less? Demand for doctors and related health care? Even former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, in TV interviews, admitted that "Undoubtedly access to lower-wage foreign workers has a depressing effect [on wages]". 2. Quoting 1 article from a progressive magazine (which incidentally, endorsed Hillary Clinton) to "prove" the voting behavior of over 100 million people is kind of ridiculous.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  1. How would you separate that effect from the well-documented and systemic collusion to depress.wages and reduce employee turnover that already affects our industry? As for the count, do you have some reasources that aren't secretly written by daily stormer folks?
  - patrickg_zill 9y ago
    re 1: so only the computer-related companies are smart enough to understand and then take advantage of such effects? The count has remained unchanged since the late 1990s/early 2000s. Yet there are many who have crossed over the southern border each year since then. Therefore ...
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      Let's split this by paragraph. Sorry to fisk your post so much. > re 1: so only the computer-related companies are smart enough to understand and then take advantage of such effects? I think maybe you're misunderstanding me. Apple, Google, Oracle, and others have engaged in a wage fixing cartel that was exposed a few years ago. A big long summary was laid out here: https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/ https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage... > The count has remained unchanged since the late 1990s/early 2000s. Yet there are many who have crossed over the southern border each year since then. Therefore ... I'm not sure what you're referring to here or if you're suggesting I disagree with the amount of "illegal" immigration being on an uptick. I think it is, but data I've seen suggests an impression that it's a function of the country's total population, not a trend that rises out-of-proportion. Further, the rules for immigration (and the various visa quotas) have not fixed ("remained unchanged") since 1990. It's eye-rolling, incandescently hot cow pies ripped right off of a poorly sourced Breitbart article comment section to suggest they are. Our economy has grown substantially as a result of business owners exploiting labor that has no legal recourse for mistreatment, cannot easily push back on unlivable wages, and does not receive health insurance. And it's outrageous.

by gizmo 9y ago

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago

1. I didn't say illegal immigration was a major cause of low wages, but it definitely does have an effect, especially among lower class workers. You say "Undocumented people mostly do jobs Americans refuse to do," but the issue is that Americans refuse to do it for minimum wage. Why would someone do backbreaking labor for near minimum wage and no benefits when they can work at a gas station making more? For Americans to do those jobs, wages would have to go up. Corporations would be forced to do so if illegal immigration didn't keep wages down. 2. That site that you linked to is ridiculous. They measure racism by peoples' beliefs in self-determination and whether or not illegal immigrants take jobs. Which they do. If there are 10 million illegal immigrants in a country of 300 million doing lower class work, and those people aren't equally distributed across the country, you can bet there will be pockets of land where lower class wages are suppressed. And you can bet that, within those areas impacted, views towards illegal immigrants will be more negative.

jakelazaroff 9y ago
At the core of your argument is this premise: > Corporations would be forced to do so if illegal immigration didn't keep wages down. But no one is forcing corporations to hire undocumented immigrants over people authorized to work here; in fact, they're pressured not to. It's illegal! That's why "illegal immigration" is cast as a racist issue: it's often a hand-wavey dog whistle blaming people of color for economic issues while absolving (generally white-owned) businesses of any responsibility.

patrickg_zill 9y ago

1. If H1Bs are shown to have depressed wages of computer programmers etc., why would it not be logical to expect illegals to depress wages? If there were 12 million fewer people in the USA (the laughably low "official" number of illegals in the country), would demand for housing be less? Demand for doctors and related health care? Even former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, in TV interviews, admitted that "Undoubtedly access to lower-wage foreign workers has a depressing effect [on wages]". 2. Quoting 1 article from a progressive magazine (which incidentally, endorsed Hillary Clinton) to "prove" the voting behavior of over 100 million people is kind of ridiculous.

KirinDave 9y ago
1. How would you separate that effect from the well-documented and systemic collusion to depress.wages and reduce employee turnover that already affects our industry? As for the count, do you have some reasources that aren't secretly written by daily stormer folks?
- patrickg_zill 9y ago
  re 1: so only the computer-related companies are smart enough to understand and then take advantage of such effects? The count has remained unchanged since the late 1990s/early 2000s. Yet there are many who have crossed over the southern border each year since then. Therefore ...
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    Let's split this by paragraph. Sorry to fisk your post so much. > re 1: so only the computer-related companies are smart enough to understand and then take advantage of such effects? I think maybe you're misunderstanding me. Apple, Google, Oracle, and others have engaged in a wage fixing cartel that was exposed a few years ago. A big long summary was laid out here: https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/ https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage... > The count has remained unchanged since the late 1990s/early 2000s. Yet there are many who have crossed over the southern border each year since then. Therefore ... I'm not sure what you're referring to here or if you're suggesting I disagree with the amount of "illegal" immigration being on an uptick. I think it is, but data I've seen suggests an impression that it's a function of the country's total population, not a trend that rises out-of-proportion. Further, the rules for immigration (and the various visa quotas) have not fixed ("remained unchanged") since 1990. It's eye-rolling, incandescently hot cow pies ripped right off of a poorly sourced Breitbart article comment section to suggest they are. Our economy has grown substantially as a result of business owners exploiting labor that has no legal recourse for mistreatment, cannot easily push back on unlivable wages, and does not receive health insurance. And it's outrageous.