5 ms·
> We need foreign low skilled workers and they want to work, but we need to regulate that workforce so they don't undercut our native low-skills workforce by be
by rangibaby 8y ago
> We need foreign low skilled workers and they want to work, but we need to regulate that workforce so they don't undercut our native low-skills workforce by being unregulated and overwhelming the workforce with cheap unregulated labor.
That ship sailed some time ago to China or anywhere there is a sweatshop.
- mc32 8y agoFarm work, restaurant work, construction work, warehouse work cannot be "shipped off to China", yet we have our own population which has been undercut by unregulated cheap labor. We do need a number of foreign workers, but we need to regulate it so as to not flood our labor market and undercut our workers and have it where two grown adults working full time jobs can't afford to live a lower middle class lifestyle (as was possible couple of decades ago).
- skybrian 8y agoFarm work could be shipped off by importing food instead of growing it in the U.S. (Farmers going out of business if the cost of labor goes up too much.)
- mc32 8y agoWe have seasons and we also have scale. Might lose some green leafy things, but not the real stuff like wheat, sorghum, corn, soy, rice, etc. Some of these leafy green things are gonna get automated anyway.
- skybrian 8y agoSo, you don't care about California farmers or dairy farmers then.
- mc32 8y agoDairy is pretty automated, farming is getting more and more automated. But, we will be helping many low skills Americans who now get undersold in the labor market. Other advanced economies manage the cost of labor in agribiz, we can too.
- somberi 8y agoPariculary Farm Work (edited for clarity): Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Stat... In 2012, there were 3.2 million farmers,[19] ranchers and other agricultural managers and an estimated 757,900 agricultural workers were legally employed in the US. Animal breeders accounted for 11,500 of those workers with the rest categorized as miscellaneous agricultural workers. The median pay was $9.12 per hour or $18,970 per year.[20] From 1999–2009, roughly 50% of hired crop farmworkers in the U.S. were noncitizens working without legal authorization.[23] Large farms rely on new immigrants (such as Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Pakistani, and Mexican) that do not have many other options to work for extremely low wages. The legal status of the worker has been shown to impact the wage received for a job. An agricultural worker with no documentation earns an average of 15% less than one with amnesty or green card.