5 ms·

Plenty of people want to work in the US. It's just that the US keeps deporting people that so desperately want to work there. Some of these people literally ris

Plenty of people want to work in the US. It's just that the US keeps deporting people that so desperately want to work there. Some of these people literally risk their own and their family's life to get to the US. With unemployment levels historically low, there are simply not a lot of locals looking for work for every job position to be filled. And certainly not when the wages are too low, the work is hard, and employers are exploiting them and generally treating them like trash. The rational thing to do, which goes against the xenophobic tendencies of the general public (they are taking our jobs), is to do what every growing economy has to do: grow the labor market by providing access to willing labor from outside that market. Whether it's slaves, illegal immigrants, or simply making it easier for migrants to enter legally really does not matter as long as people are able to get to the jobs that need doing. There's work to be done and there are people willing to do the work. Bring them together and the work gets done. Cut off the labor supply and you get issues with businesses struggling to get things done. Unless of course they can afford to pay market rates. And with inflation being a thing, those market rates are going up, not down. The US has imported lots of cheap labor from abroad pretty much throughout it's history and especially during its boom periods. Sometimes as slaves, sometimes as refugees, and sometimes just by providing visas to those who wanted them. It wasn't always pretty of course but there are now large communities of people in the US with roots pretty much all over the world. There's no shortage of people looking to get visas to work in the US. Just an artificial shortage of visas. How many million people do you need? They are there. At any skill level. All you need to do is let them in.

dimgl 4y ago
- bloppe 4y ago
  I'm American in this is one of the most sensible comments I've read so far.
  - mynameishere 4y ago
    The comment you are responding to is dead for some reason, so I will quote it here: This comment is non-sensical. If you're not from the U.S., why opine on U.S. immigration policies? I will answer the question: If you are not from a particular country, it makes perfectly good sense to advise it to engage in disastrous policies, disastrous to its citizens, if those same policies could potentially benefit you in some way. That's why jillesvangurp is recommending insane immigration levels to a nation not his or her own.
unglaublich 4y ago
Yes, plenty of people want to work in the mediocre circumstances of the US labor market, but only because they come out of a war torn or impoverished country. No sane US citizen wants to work their ass off for minimum wage and minimum benefits. And why would they? Why give away your precious limited time for free, so some corp. can benefit from it? Employment is supposed to be a situation with mutual benefit for employer and employee. Flooding the labor market with cheap work force that doesn't complain when you break their backs is exactly what will worsen the situation. What we need is LESS people that are happy to have their backs broken for peanuts. And unions might help achieving that. Employers need to come up with better compensation. THAT is the only rational thing that should happen right now. And the tighter the labor market, the earlier that will happen.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  The US could of course choose to be more like Europe in that regard. But you should know that Europe has the exact same challenges for the exact same reasons. People don't want to be nurses or harvest strawberries or do anything that is a combination of under-payed and hard. That work gets done by people willing to do the work. There are lots of seasonal workers from Eastern Europe that show up to do that work in e.g. Germany and the Netherlands, lots of foreign nurses and doctors as well. The UK decided that it did not want to be in Europe anymore and now it has a labor shortage. Because it literally closed the borders for that labor to enter the market that until recently was able to travel and work there.
  - badpun 4y ago
    Yep. Migrant labor is basically exploitation of the poor by the (comparably) richer societes. There are estimated a couple hundreds of thousands of Polish women in Western Europe (mostly in Germany) who are live-in nurses/maids for elderly people who can no longer live by themselves. They get paid a pittance by local standard for such a hard and often humiliating labor. Same for foreigners doing construction labor etc. This way, a typical German of Frenchman can have a semi-slave doing cheap construction for them or taking care of their aging parent, so they don't have to. Without the migrants, these people would never afford such services, and their standard of living would be in effect much lower. Interestingly, a lot of people don't see it that way - I guess you still have to be middle-class to afford a Eastern European economic slave, so working class being don't benefit from that - and, at the same time, the migrants are lowering wages for the jobs that they do.
robk 4y ago
Or just pay citizens more? That seems easier.
- fundad 4y ago
  Exactly! Wage growth and tight job market has been the promise of anti-immigration politicians for so long. It’s shocking so few are out there taking credit for it. Must have never been about economic anxiety.
Zircom 4y ago
Could also stop deporting the people that are already here working. My girlfriend in college was from India, was here on a student visa and graduated with her Electrical Engineering degree fully paid for by scholarships. Not sure on the details because we weren't super close after she graduated, but she continued staying here and worked under that same visa for maybe 2 years before it ran out. Her company couldn't get her an H1-B in time and her application for a permanent residence didn't go anywhere because it's basically a lottery. So they shipped her back home after dropping $40,000 on her education. What a waste.

dimgl 4y ago

bloppe 4y ago
I'm American in this is one of the most sensible comments I've read so far.
- mynameishere 4y ago
  The comment you are responding to is dead for some reason, so I will quote it here: This comment is non-sensical. If you're not from the U.S., why opine on U.S. immigration policies? I will answer the question: If you are not from a particular country, it makes perfectly good sense to advise it to engage in disastrous policies, disastrous to its citizens, if those same policies could potentially benefit you in some way. That's why jillesvangurp is recommending insane immigration levels to a nation not his or her own.

unglaublich 4y ago

Yes, plenty of people want to work in the mediocre circumstances of the US labor market, but only because they come out of a war torn or impoverished country. No sane US citizen wants to work their ass off for minimum wage and minimum benefits. And why would they? Why give away your precious limited time for free, so some corp. can benefit from it? Employment is supposed to be a situation with mutual benefit for employer and employee. Flooding the labor market with cheap work force that doesn't complain when you break their backs is exactly what will worsen the situation. What we need is LESS people that are happy to have their backs broken for peanuts. And unions might help achieving that. Employers need to come up with better compensation. THAT is the only rational thing that should happen right now. And the tighter the labor market, the earlier that will happen.

jillesvangurp 4y ago
The US could of course choose to be more like Europe in that regard. But you should know that Europe has the exact same challenges for the exact same reasons. People don't want to be nurses or harvest strawberries or do anything that is a combination of under-payed and hard. That work gets done by people willing to do the work. There are lots of seasonal workers from Eastern Europe that show up to do that work in e.g. Germany and the Netherlands, lots of foreign nurses and doctors as well. The UK decided that it did not want to be in Europe anymore and now it has a labor shortage. Because it literally closed the borders for that labor to enter the market that until recently was able to travel and work there.
- badpun 4y ago
  Yep. Migrant labor is basically exploitation of the poor by the (comparably) richer societes. There are estimated a couple hundreds of thousands of Polish women in Western Europe (mostly in Germany) who are live-in nurses/maids for elderly people who can no longer live by themselves. They get paid a pittance by local standard for such a hard and often humiliating labor. Same for foreigners doing construction labor etc. This way, a typical German of Frenchman can have a semi-slave doing cheap construction for them or taking care of their aging parent, so they don't have to. Without the migrants, these people would never afford such services, and their standard of living would be in effect much lower. Interestingly, a lot of people don't see it that way - I guess you still have to be middle-class to afford a Eastern European economic slave, so working class being don't benefit from that - and, at the same time, the migrants are lowering wages for the jobs that they do.

robk 4y ago

Or just pay citizens more? That seems easier.

fundad 4y ago
Exactly! Wage growth and tight job market has been the promise of anti-immigration politicians for so long. It’s shocking so few are out there taking credit for it. Must have never been about economic anxiety.

Zircom 4y ago

Could also stop deporting the people that are already here working. My girlfriend in college was from India, was here on a student visa and graduated with her Electrical Engineering degree fully paid for by scholarships. Not sure on the details because we weren't super close after she graduated, but she continued staying here and worked under that same visa for maybe 2 years before it ran out. Her company couldn't get her an H1-B in time and her application for a permanent residence didn't go anywhere because it's basically a lottery. So they shipped her back home after dropping $40,000 on her education. What a waste.