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It's understandable that there is a lot of attention on those affected by the shutdown, but what about all those who have lost their livelihoods due to illegal
by tomohawk 8y ago
It's understandable that there is a lot of attention on those affected by the shutdown, but what about all those who have lost their livelihoods due to illegal immigration? These are American citizens who rightly expect that their government that they pay taxes to will protect them. I keep hearing about "jobs Americans don't want to do", but I know several people who were driven from their trades due to this.
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- Jtsummers 8y agoPressure the employers and focus on people overstaying after legal entry. Let the rest of the country get back to work, we are going to pay them anyways so all the shutdown has accomplished is to inconvenience people and spend a lot of money with nothing to show for it. If your friends knew people were employing illegal immigrants they should have reported it if it bothers them. Not complain about it.
- tomohawk 8y agoSure - blame the victims.
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- fao_ 8y agoEnforcing that employers pay all employees proper (internationally competing, livable) wages regardless of nationality or immigration status, and fast tracking immigration tickets, would solve this pretty effectively. The first part solves the fact that companies prefer immigrants due to the fact that they can pay them a lower wage, setting a minimum wage in law that is internationally competing would drive some businesses out of america, but those businesses are harmful anyway because they are exploitative towards their employees, and therefore they aim to exploit Americans. The second aspect, fast-tracking immigration status so that immigrants can become legal citizens easier, solves the fact that some employers might abuse the status of immigrants to pay them less. It'd be trivial (and actually it is quite common already) for employers to tell their immigrant employees "Accept this shitty pay or I will report you to ICE". This completely removes that method of extortion from being viable.
- michaelt 8y agoIf an illegally underpaying employer only hires illegal immigrants, will the crime be seen by anyone who won't lose out from reporting it? Seems to me, if a gangmaster is supplying seasonal workers to a farm, the farmer won't report them, the gangmaster won't report themselves, and the workers won't report their employer. Who's left?
- fao_ 8y ago> If an illegally underpaying employer only hires illegal immigrants, who is going to see the crime and report it to the enforcement agency? As I already addressed with point two, fast-tracking of immigration status to legal citizen status, is vitally important to remove this method of extortion.
- michaelt 8y agoSo if you cross the border and join an illegally-underpaying work crew, you're guaranteed legal citizen status?
- matt4077 8y agoSure, why not. Maybe couple it with whistleblower incentives. If your family has been in the US for 100+ years, I assure you that’s exactly how they got started.
- ben_w 8y agoI’d be in favour of that. I can see the point in border controls for goods (laws on what can be sold vary from place to place), and an army to stop someone else taking over, but not for individual people, be they workers, tourists, students, children, pensioners, or refugees.
- Spooky23 8y agoIt’s pretty easy. Auditing 101. You gather data on the manpower requirements for farmer Joe, look at the payroll taxes paid by farmers with similar operations, and audit the bottom standard deviations for tax compliance. One of the reasons that conservatives traditionally have such a hard on for the IRS is that it’s the primary agency able to detect these types of frauds. In the years they control the House, they defund IRS enforcement ability.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoI agree that if illegal immigration is causing job loss to americans it is a problem that should be addressed; I admit I don't have much education on the subject. Do you know any studies to give hard(or even a range of) numbers of the effect of illegal immigration on american job loss?
- thechao 8y agoQuestion: are you looking for facts to support your opinion, or are you looking for enough facts to determine what’s happening with respect to illegal immigration & jobs in the U.S.? Because the story is complicated.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoThe latter. My opinion on the subject can be summarized as 'I dont know enough to opine, but if you have an opinion I'd like to see what you're basing that opinion on'.
- matt4077 8y agoIt’s important to remember that any person is possibly a worker, but certainly a consumer. In fact, those two aspects average out to perfect balance, by definition. So even in a worst case scenario, where all immigrants happen to have one skill only, and overwhelm the market for, say, phone booth cleaning, they are also a market for any other profession of at least equal size. In practice, the numbers of immigrants should be easily absorbed by the vastly larger population of the US, although it may be beneficial to, for example, spread out the impact among the states and invest in vocational training.
- darkerside 8y agoI agree with this principle. Can you tell us more about the trades people you know have been driven from?
- johnnyfaehell 8y agoJust curious, what trades were these people working that they lost due to illegals? I find it hard to believe that there is a widespread job loss for skilled trade people.
- mberning 8y agoConstruction is one example. Doing drywall or carpentry is a highly skilled job. There are many subs that only employ illegals, bid really low on jobs, and drive out legitimate subs.
- johnnyfaehell 8y agoLast time I checked there were tons of construction work, in fact, I believe there is an undersupply skilled in that field. It's the unskilled construction jobs that are at risk for legals. Also, doing drywall isn't highly skilled, it's job you get anyone to do with a few days of training (hell you could get away with not doing the training)
- mberning 8y agoYeah, there is a lot of demand for work, and illegal labor drives down the price. You are out to lunch on doing drywall being easy. To be a pro (quality work done fast every day of the week) at hanging and finishing drywall is not something you get good at in 2 days.
- johnnyfaehell 8y ago> finishing drywall is not something you get good at in 2 days. I never said get good at it within that time but you learn the skills required. Practice is how you get good. Highly skilled jobs take a long period of time just to learn the skills required. Hence drywalling is a low skill job.
- mberning 8y agoThere you go with that wrongthink. You’re on the wrong site buddy. In general these folks don’t care that illegal immigration disproportionately impacts native born poor and miniorities. They treat it as some kind of myth. They also act as if every gov employee is some vitally important researcher or scientist. Anybody who has ever worked in a legitimately large organization knows that you can easily lose 10-15% of the workforce and barely even notice it.
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