Because the industrialization of America is over, and has been for decades. USA doesn't need low-wage, immigrant workers anymore. The railroads have already been built, the fields have been plowed, and now that's all done by big automated machines. Everything that cheap workers used to do that was valuable is now automated.
Who does the farming? Who does the cleaning? Who builds the buildings? Who are the line cooks? That should be obvious.
But it should be just as obvious that there are plenty of immigrants who are also necessary because they bring new ideas, their education, their incredible work ethic, to fill in the gaps that the US clearly has.
There is one thing that unites all of us (and I do mean us, as I am one of them). We all dream of a society where our hard work can become prosperity for ourselves and for everyone else, a plot of fertile soil that is worth sowing. We all come here with a dream.
And I personally don't mind so much that I'm uplifting people that don't agree with my existence. I just wish that they could stay out of our way so we could all benefit.
I think there are many jobs Americans have decided the just don’t want to do - at a large scale. That said many do.
There is a completely different dynamic with job shops like wipro and others sponsoring “high skilled visas” which are only used to undercut certain labor markets.
I'm not against tightening up the constraints to prevent what becomes indentured servitude dressed up in red, white, and blue. That doesn't help the American people or those who carry within them the American dream. But fixing that is not everyone's actual intent, and that does really bother me.
And your point? The US has an issue where at a certain price point labor has no interest. Reality is that is multiplied if it actually requires real work in a field, rudimentary construction, etc.
This is not a visa issue, but one we solve with illegal labor and visas.
The real solution is visas and making those that done want to work and sponge off social services, actually work.
My kiddo graduates soon, her baby daddy owes $75k in back child support - say 7 years. He’s talented enough to make $150+ wood working. Refuses to do anything because the man/etc. Branch not far from tree.
I’d love to turn a POS like him in such that someone equally talented and wants to contribute can, take a percentage. The person gets a visa, the dead beat gets servitude. No take on the servitude just taxes maybe going off to pay the debt.
The US is a land of opportunity, but also a land of a bunch of idiots that are entitled.
I don't know anything about that situation, but it sounds difficult and I'm sorry that it's happening to your loved ones. I'm not sure you can make someone work if they don't care to, though. Like, take the common example of debtors having their driver's licenses suspended for their debt. Is that really helping anyone? They certainly won't be any closer to paying it off.
I can't disagree with your final assertion there, but there's really very little you can do besides offer greater incentives that get people to genuinely want to work. And I know there's not a market for that and that the rich are keeping the purse strings tight. So it goes.
Whoa there. What's wrong with "undercutting labor markets"? Last I heard, when a profession (e.g. doctors) decides to limit the number of practicioners in order to charge a higher price to the public, that's a bad thing. It benefits the people currently employed in that profession now, but it hurts others who wants to join, and it hurts the public who wants to get the service (e.g. healthcare). The sum of hurt is greater than the sum of help. Cartels are harmful; they don't stop being harmful just because there are borders involved.
I mean, it's one thing if you think immigrants commit more crimes or use more taxpayer money. These are both false, but at least the argument could hypothetically work. But if you say that even perfectly law-abiding, non-welfare-using, good-work-performing hypothetical immigrants shouldn't be allowed in because they would "undercut labor markets", that's plain nonsense. Such nice hypothetical immigrants should be invited in large numbers and everyone would win from it.
If someone has no specials skills beyond what a current citizen college grad has, why is there a need for that individual to have an H1 or related visa? Many visas get issued to people that take the equivalent of a University of Phoenix degree.
Without immigration an imminent depopulation crisis is on its way to America.
We are actually blessed to be in demand as an immigration destination as well as a culture and infrastructure uniquely set up for it.
Squandering that advantage to satisfy xenophobic ideology is yet another demonstration of the Republican Party’s lack of fiscal responsibility. See also: completely random war in Iran, ICE budget increases spent on kicking out taxpayers/customers, tax cuts for billionaires, the current record high budget deficit, $1.8 billion fund for Trump brownshirts, etc.
To be honest, the depopulation crisis is not something we are likely to be able to stop in the long term. But curtailing immigration certainly won't help, and the US would be uniquely positioned as an immigration destination to weather the storm of rapid depopulation better than other countries if it continued its status as an immigration center.
Recommended reading:
After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People
Or really any other book on the subject, I'm not married to that one, it's not a perfect book it's just one that's easy to find because of the distinctive cover.
I don't care to get into talking about Israel. It's a country with the population of Ohio, so if it's an anomaly, it's an anomaly. The only discussion I can get into that country is going to get distasteful.
You're putting the cart in front of the horse. If the US economy didn't need low-wage immigrant workers, we wouldn't be complaining about them in the first place, because they would've gone somewhere else where the jobs are.
The fact they're coming the US literally means its economy needs them.
Of course we could all wax philosophical and say "Nobody needs a Frappuccino every other day, we just want it," but then nobody needs to live in a prosperous economy anyway.
There's always work available if someone is asking for a low enough wage, that should be self-evident. How does this prove that the population at large benefits from more people being willing to work for low wages?
Classical economics would argue that higher population tends to increase productivity (economies of scale and specialization) while lowering wages, increasing land value, and improving returns on capital. Free trade has a very similar effect. You can find this analysis in all standard texts (Smith, Riccardo, etc) and even progressive works such as Progress and Poverty by Henry George.
Different groups are free to have different opinions of this tradeoff. Big landowners benefit immensely while working class renters only suffer.
> The fact they're coming the US literally means its economy needs them.
Not necessarily. As just one example, it could mean one of their family immigrated for a well paying job, and now they want their parents, or other family, to join them and they don’t have skills in a high paying industry.
The presence of low income wage earners does not, by force of nature nor economics, require them.
Having said that, I tend to against minimum wage policy.
I wish i could ill find the video, the farms in CA certainly do need labor. In the 90s when there was another - people south of the border are taking jobs bs - an interview er asked people waiting for for support at a welfare office in Salinas (lots of farms) offering jobs in the fields. Unanimous nope.
They are needed and often do more than those that are citizens.
Remove, or at least tighten the requirements, for welfare.
Your argument seems to be the equivalent of: if the (illegal? surely some of them) immigrants could get welfare they also wouldn’t do those jobs.
As welfare increases to the point where it starts to competes with jobs, it seems sensible to expect welfare will compete with jobs. Especially when you take in to consideration the expenses welfare recipients don’t incur as a result of not having to attend the workplace nor dress for such.
Low quality bait comment, cherry picking a few kids of well educated well-off immigrants who turned out to be rockstars growing up under the exceptional US economic conditions. It's called the exception, not the rule. If those kids were to grow up in some underdeveloped country, none of them would have achieved anything noteworthy which proves the US itself and the conditions it offers is the secret sauce, not immigrants alone by themselves.
Also, some people on your list are absolute red flags I would rather not have in my country, which is proving my point that good border controls and strict visas are essential.
It’s amazing how close and how far you are at understanding my point simultaneously.
Without committing to some wildly contradictory logic, the xenophobic political party in charge of this country cannot be simultaneously in favor of mass deportations, denaturalization, and generally closing the borders while being against denaturalizing and deporting Melania Trump and Elon Musk for obvious visa violations. There is also contradiction in the way the right wing has gotten cozy with big tech companies run by immigrants who entered the country on the H1B visa they demonize so fervently.
Just imagine the outcry if Obama was from South Africa and was standing behind the president's desk talking about how he's running a new illegal government agency.
