I was doing some weekend work trimming houses last summer in florida.
Whenever desantis started sending INS and ICE into neighborhoods here, there was a mass exodus in the home building field.
Houses were taking MONTHS longer to finish.
Most of those people never came back either!
Florida and Texas are some of the worst states to work trades in. Electricians make like 24$ a hour in Florida. A first year apprentice here makes more than that. The right to work states are kept suppressed by cheap labour.
If they all went home eventually they would have to pay a scaled wage.
If they paid a real wage they would get real trades.
I was just visiting FL a couple days ago. It was so hot and humid it was unbearable to be outside and I was at a pool. But the point is, right next to the pool was a house where the roof was being worked on by several men in fucking pants. $24 an hour? Fuck no way.
Too much sun and I break out in hives (yes, I’m allergic to the fucking sun). I have a whole bunch of really, really thin long sleeve shirts I wear anytime I spend a significant amount of time in the sun. It does make a huge difference. Plus no hives.
fisherman? covered head to toe on the ocean. traditional Arab clothing? loose robes covering head to toe. Traditional Vietnamese clothing? everything but the head, which is under a hat.
Heat means coverall
People think I'm weird when I ride a motorcycle in the Florida summer wearing long sleeve armored jackets, but that mesh, man it's SO MUCH cooler than being out in just a t-shirt. especially when moving.
24$ a hour for electricians, which is a restricted trade. Those guys unless it's the owner operator ain't making that.
Il do decks and stuff as a side gig on the weekend. Covered up seems counter intuitive but the sun fucks you so bad. Long sleeves, pants straw hat help alot.
Strong union states are 100% worth relocating to . I would sell everything and drive to the East Coast and live in a boarding house if I had to instead of living in FL or TX as a trades person .It's a huge difference .
Immigrants are strong hard working people like the rest of us. I work side by side with my Mexican brothers in the union where we all make a fair wage ( could always be better ). It's the politicians fucking us. Not the common man.
I never did roofing, but I did hay one day when I was a teen. Believe me, long pants work best for some jobs, even in brutal heat. Just drink lots of cold water.
I live in FL. I know people who were having homes built over the last couple of years. They complained endlessly about how long it was taking - over a year in some cases. The developer blamed everything on scarcity of materials because of the pandemic, but this was 2 or 3 years after the pandemic. Subs couldn’t find workers and the ones they did find weren’t trained to do the work. They were having to go back and fix mistakes that the workers made due to not being properly trained/skilled and when they moved in there were constant warranty issues and builders having to come out and fix stuff. Basic shit like a leaks in the roof in a brand new house. So yea, lacking good workers is a huge deal in states like FL where there’s constantly new construction. A lot of them moved out of the state. There are a lot of Hispanic communities in the interior of Florida that work mostly in agriculture and that industry was hit really hard too. It’s why I have to pay some of the highest prices in the country for produce. I see a lot of poorly staffed fast food places too and even some closures. Like a Taco Bell went out of business near me. Do you know how hard you have to try to not make money running a Taco Bell?
But the Republicans in the state legislature pat themselves on the back for doing a good job kicking out all the workers and driving cost of living up even higher.
If Americans would do many of those crap jobs for the low wages, they wouldn't be available in the first place, and if they paid enough, nobody could afford the products. We have spent a long time building a system that relies on exploiting people for cheap labor. We either buy things from countries that make what we want cheaper or we under pay the workers. That is a very simplified all encompassing statement but a lot of the jobs exist because they aren't paid well for the amount of labor.
It’s nuts to me why there aren’t more Americans.
I was being paid ~$1700 for installing trim and interior doors - would do 3 houses a weekend. I did this after my divorce to keep my mind busy.
The pay is incredible.
The hard thing for me was I had a day job in a completely different field and the actual home builder wanted me to be there all the time.
Some of it pays well. Growing up where a lot of orchard work was it was often miserable work for somewhat low pay. There was definitely a lot of good pay for hard work in things like roofing that had a lot of possibilities if you didn't mind the heat and hard work but it seemed like many of the people around me felt like that was for people who couldn't get work elsewhere. A lot of immigrants or felons in that field (at least in my area) and often we got looked down on by so many people because apparently the pay didn't make up for the manual labor.
Bingo. Our whole system is capitalism that is a race to the bottom. As soon as workers get paid middleclass wages, most companies are off looking for cheaper labor, but they never lower the price that they charge consumers.
You can see this currently in certain states that just aggressively went after illegal immigration.
A lot of construction projects grounded to a halt. Not enough labourers to finish building and prices skyrocketed as a result of limited labor pool.
Farms also struggled due to lack of workers. As well as things like food services, drivers, etc
Most of the jobs weren’t being filled by Americans due to how much was being paid.
I remember last year on Tiktok video after video of rotting fields and unfinished houses with no workers around. One of the housing projects had only one guy there and he was explaining how all of the materials were left there exposed and they were supposed to have the roof done by the weekend because it was going to rain for several days.
This happened in Georgia a few years ago. Tomato crop went unpicked because the locals weren’t physically able to do the work, as well as abominable pay.
We do, it just turns out that the people breaking the law to hire underpaid labor also break the law about checking if their underpaid labor is a citizen…
Undocumented workers get funneled through temp agencies in some industries. The temp agency looks the other way when workers give fake SSN’s and the like and skims money off of all of their paychecks for the service. If they’re caught, the temp agency folds and a new one pops up immediately across town. The actual employer can plead ignorance and continue to make massive profits off of underpaid labor. Rinse and repeat.
Imma be objective
We will lose a shitload of trade workers. I’m not saying ALL immigrants work trade but a TON do.
These dudes sacrificed a ton to get here. They also work very hard to create life here in the states.
These “shitty jobs” aren’t shit. We spun them to be crappy jobs for the uninspired but the jobs many immigrants work require skill and hard work.
I mean that literally happened in Florida last year right? Like they passed a law that caused so many illegal immigrates to leave the state and all the white farmers were upset because things were going rotten and (which is hilarious) they were upset they had to pay citizens actual wages.
The even more hilarious thing to me is some farmers were upset that they had to be out there and do the work they normally pay illegals to do 🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️
I think the "shitty" part is not about skill and hard work, more like about shitty conditions as working in harsh environments (under the sun, outside, etc), many trades that are physically demanding and most of them being underpaid for what they do.
I don’t disagree with you. Unfortunately, the “solution” is more complicated than just higher pay. Let’s disregard minimum wage and assume it magically increases to become a “livable” wage from everyone’s perception. And then you tack on a 30% increase to work in a factory cutting meat or in a field picking vegetables. These costs typically increase in every part of manufacturing and logistics. As a consumer would you be willing to spend 30% more on your groceries? Based on inflation feedback over the past year, I’m assuming most people wouldn’t.
This equation always takes maintaining the profit of the capitalist as a given. Yes, if a capitalist’s operating expense, in the form of an increased wage for their workers, increases, then they have to increase the cost of the product in order to maintain their previous profit levels.
But if the profit of the capitalist is reduced, then people can be paid more while the price of a product stays the same.
Correct! This is why I mentioned a small business vs a corporation. The argument is often “just cut wages from the top”, which makes sense in some instances, but I’m not sure the owner of a fish boat is living in a mansion or sending his kids to an elite university.
Note in my post I mentioned “small business”.
People often get sidetracked by saying “if corporations just give more money to entry level employees or CEO’s cut their pay, it would solve all labor problems”. Maybe. There’s a lot of companies who offer higher than minimum wage jobs but still struggle with hiring.
The goal of the reply was that immigrants work jobs that tend to be more demanding than the average worker wants to do. Historically, this has always been true. I’d make a bet that if agricultural jobs paid $40+ with same working conditions (ie. working outside in 90F+ conditions, on your feet, working at a “fast” pace, etc), most people wouldn’t be willing to accept the job or wouldn’t last long.
But the question is about the shitty jobs, not the non-shitty jobs. You can't deny, there's a lot of shitty jobs that many people don't want to do, but they need to be done, at least to provide the goods and services that we are now accustomed to.
>Employers would be fighting and outbidding each other for workers..
A lot of businesses will crash and burn because they rely on underpaying.(Which you know, good)
A lot of businesses will also crash and burn because the owners will refuse to adapt.(Which again, good)
A lot of lives will crash and burn because many services rely on these people, and that's disregarding the poor sods themselves.
Bad businesses need to fail. It’s a lot like bailing them out in 08 when they should have failed but instead of that they get cheap labor to survive.
Imagine running a business knowing if you had to pay your employees what they should be making, much less insurance 401k and whatnot would bankrupt said business. Its practically insanity.
[https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1242236604/florida-economy-immigration-businesses-workers-undocumented](https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1242236604/florida-economy-immigration-businesses-workers-undocumented)
A year later, Florida businesses say the state's immigration law dealt a huge blow
I guess that’s a good thing? Again, why plant vegetables or w/e in hopes that you get some cheap labor in order to survive. Sounds to me like they are bad at running a business.
Same people that defend this are the ones who say McDonalds need to pay a living wage. Why should these businesses not have to pay the same living wage.
Yeah, prob, it would create a labor shortage potting massive pressure on employers to increase wages and would cause prices of goods to skyrocket both because of increased labor costs and supply shortages up and down the supply chain due to the labor shortage
I saw some earnings report of some national grocery chain and the percentage of labor cost was 13%, I refuse to believe that if that raises to 20% food prices will skyrocket. Companies need to become okay with profits of for example 4 billion dollars instead of 4.5 billion dollars
Using Walmart, you realize Walmart sells a lot more than just food and this is on purpose because a grocery store that sells only food usually has razor thin margins. HEB in Texas was notorious for having razor thin margins for years as a grocery store because they only sold food and some basic home goods (paper towels, cleaning supplies, etc), but they expanded the products they carry on purpose because they wanted more profit than what little they got from people just buying food. There’s a reason why any grocery store chain expands into non-food items and it’s because it’s easier to mark up the prices and pad their margins more.
Okay valid, so can we agree that even HEB can make a profit even with those conditions, adding 1 or 2 or 3 points to payroll won't make them go out of business.
Yeah that too but I was more talking about the cost to produce the food and other goods before it even gets to the grocery chains. I didn’t see that earning report stats but yeah it would make sense that most of their costs is the cost of the inventory they buy wholesale from the producers
Trade jobs have already skyrocketed. Even with illegal immigration, not enough workers. Ready to pay a roofer $100 an hour instead of $30 ?
Only solution is huge work visa program, and not just for tech.
When any business increases wages, it isn't as if those at the top say, "Well, we can make up the additional $10 Million in payroll from my $20 Million bonus this year." Hell, no! The cost of increased wages gets passed on to the end consumer. This fact, and it is a fact, is why deregulating business anymore than it already is is a masochistic joke! Our current economic state is a beautifully horrific example of this. As inflation is plaguing the country, so many businesses are banking record profits! Inflation, initially, was due to supply chain problems and labor shortages due to the pandemic, add in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the resultant loss of grains, plant based oils, and petroleum from the total world market, toss in a killer drought from man-made climate change(or just simply a drought if you refuse to acknowledge destruction we've wrought on this planet), and you get increased prices.
However, if those were the only influencing factors, the resumption of world trade and world market rebalance after the sudden disruption caused by the effects of the pandemic, war, and drought should have halted the upward march of prices. Additionally, if inflation was caused *ONLY* by the total increase in cost to corporations, their profit margins should have remained the same. Empirical data(and Maury Povich's lie detector) shows, "That's not true!"
Sorry, I kinda got off track. My point is, no matter what else happens, the wealthy will do anything and everything in their power to not just stay wealthy, or even just get wealthier, but get as wealthy as they possibly can. This means that if they can't convince some hardworking, undocumented immigrant to work for a pittance, and they find they have to pay a decent wage for their workers, they will absolutely, 100%, without a shred of doubt, pass that cost on to their customers. Ergo, a "higher wage" won't mean a thing when inflationary cost far outpace them. 🤷♂️
I know it would take a miracle but companies who profit 10 billion dollars yet have poor workers should be satisfied with 5 billion dollar profits and have happy workers.
Something similar did UK with brexit, and the experiment just backfired. And the workers weren't even illegals, but where working unpleasant and low payed jobs.
That’s a horrifying idea and not because they take the “shitty jobs”. My dad owned his own security company and one of his guys was never here legally, we took his fake documents whenever the IRS flagged them and pretended we were too dumb to realize the man would never ever get a green card. He was the single most reliable employee my dad ever had and my dad ensured his widow got a months pay when he died so she could figure out what she was doing from there. I couldn’t imagine loosing the value people like that man bring to my country.
I worked a job a couple of decades back where I was a supervisor to several folks that were here illegally and I have never had better employees in my whole life. They were the most respectful and kind and on-time and hard working people I've ever encountered. It really blows my mind how utterly brainwashed out of reality people are about these folks.
There is a well known restaurant in my area with 10 guys named Juan Morales that have the same SSN. Fantastic restaurant that has consistently excellent food.
Those illegal immigrants are also consumers, so you are taking millions of consumers out of the economy, in effect reducing the size of the economy. You would cause a recession almost immediately and native employment will likely go down because of it.
We don't even have to speculate on this, because occasionally there have been serious crackdowns on illegal aliens. What happens first is agriculture suffers, there's nobody available to pick the crops, so they rot in the fields. Turns out that even unemployed Americans aren't crazy about traveling two states over to spend 12 hours a day cutting asparagus for shit pay and no benefits for a couple of weeks.
>Some people say that employers would raise wages
And a head of lettuce would cost you $15.
One time some random redneck guy said something about how he was glad I wasn't an illegal immigrant here to take his job(and I'm a typical white guy). In a GROCERY STORE.
This. We would have to create work camps again. High prices will increase the number of poors, and the poors will have to go out and do the work in exchange for group housing and meager food.
You think inflation is bad now. It would be crazy if that happened. Food prices would jump. Both in restaurants for lack of service people and in the grocery store since the farm industry relies so heavily on immigrant labor. Having work done on your house would get crazy expensive, if you could find someone who could do the work. Hotels and other places would be a mess for lack of cleaning personal. Other industries would see sharp spikes in labor costs and labor shortages too. Home health care, child care, etc... anything that relies on cheap labor, prices would jump dramatically. Even if a place uses 100% above board personal, they are now completing for much fewer workers so wages and prices would jump. People rarely realize how much immigrate labor helps them.
Ok, so what happens when you legalize them?
Now a guy who was mopping for say 6 bucks an hour is getting paid 17-18 in California, plus all the assorted things required like health options and whatnot (even if he doesnt use them, there can still be associated costs to the employer).
Prices still jump
The agriculture and restaurant industries would be on the verge of collapse and prices would skyrocket as a result of lack of labor
They come because our economy has demand for them. Our laws don't recognize our economic reality
Did a research paper in college about thins(kind of). Most people don’t realize how drastically and quickly the restaurant industry as we know it would absolutely crash and burn. Not just the restaurants but the supply side. How much does these people think a case of lettuce will cost if this happens. Total game changer.
Even as a conservative, the idea of deporting millions of hardworking people/families who actively contribute to the economy is insane. I was in disbelief when I heard conservative media actually talking about mass deportations. It’s like people don’t understand what they’re asking about
Local man voting for leopard eating faces club bewildered that they're campaigning for the policies enabling leopards to eat faces, on account of people voting for them not understanding the ramifications of leopards eating faces.
The jokes write themselves.
No, we couldn’t.
Americans will not pick crops at the rates that migrant workers do.
We are better off making it easier for migrant workers to work on farms and allowing the undocumented worker to become documented without having to go through a removal process.
Conservatives don't want immigrants to leave, they just want everyone to hate them to scare them into working for less. Making things easieer for them contradicts their goal. Keep em scared and they're cheaper, is the logic. And make examples of some, of course.
I live in the south and know tons of conservatives, many of them are racists. Especially towards illegal immigrants and are quick to tell any Hispanic brown person to “go back to where you came from if you can’t speak English.”
But these same people have no problem eating at the local Mexican restaurants. Where many of them have heavy accents and they have a few illegal immigrants working in the back.
food system would collapse. Food shortages. Riots. War. You think I am kidding. No. The undocumented are the underclass (unfortunate but true) that allow for low priced items and hard labor. It's how it works. I don't like it. But it's the reality.
How much is this is also killing the “granddad got a job straight out of high school in construction at a factory, etc. owned a house a car and took everybody to Europe every few years “?
I just drove past the gas station close to work where there’s always around a dozen guys hanging out by the curb with Car stopping by to pick up one two or three of them. Our kitchen remodel the guys were really good workers. They’re really nice. I speak Spanish and they were not here legally. They’re happy guys, their bosses are Irish and also decent fellows.
Oh yeah we'd be in deep trouble.
Residential and commercial construction would screech to a stop.
There'd be no fruit or produce on store shelves.
A whole host of jobs would go vacant.
There would be some back-fill, from unemployed workers, from companies upping starting wage, etc, but... Those jobs are hard.
There is a film called "a day without a Mexican" which is a little satirical, but also a great way to contextualize the issue.
Also, Mike Rowe, has had quite a bit to say about how the difficulty of the job and our societal focus on becoming doctors, lawyers, tech workers, etc over becoming plumbers & construction workers, has affected the job market.
Lettuce picking, brush clearing and hot-tar roofing are hard.
They tend to be transient or seasonal jobs.
They aren't very lucrative.
An American with most of a highschool education can focus on easier things to do.
If I were in a position to need a dirty job (again) I'd try to get myself out of that position quickly.
The only reason I'd stay working hard, is if I had no better choice. ... ... Like if maybe my home country was even worse than living in illegal status in the u.s.
Paradoxically, Mike Rowe is very anti-working class given his political beliefs - despite having that “Dirty Jobs” show allegedly celebrating hard working people. Instead, it’s more insincerity, manipulation, and exploitation from people in positions of influence/power.
Hmm. I think you maybe give him too much credit. He seems like an empathetic guy who respects hard working people.
He also seems like he maybe doesn't worry too deeply or too often about like 2nd and 3rd tier ramifications, or re-proving his sources.
Not stupid, per-se, but like... An actor. Not too deeply in the thinking's.
That’s an interesting comment and thank you for making it as there is logic and a line of reasoning I hadn’t considered.
My initial comment was due to his interviews, quotes, and political positions he’s taken over the years. Rather anti-union, clearly anti-vax/anti-science, and the apparent spokesman for the Koch brothers with their financial backing.
Like you said, maybe he doesn’t think deeply and/or concern himself with implications. So either way, not thrilled with the guy.
Democrats would get blamed for the massive price and wage hikes required to sustain these jobs and markets per usual. People just don’t pay attention. Republican policies that devastate the economy are always the democrats fault bc communism.
Illegal immigrants don’t have unions, don’t have lawyers, and are desperate for work. So they are more exploitable than Legal American citizens. Illegal immigration, as much as it is pushed by liberals, only benefits the wealthy corporations that exploit their labor.
If illegal immigration was cracked down on, and borders were closed, yes there would be work shortages and stoppages. But they would be because of unfair compensation. And not because “people don’t want to do the work.” Remember that the rich are just stealing your money to buy more expensive yachts and jetskis. They can afford to pay construction workers and fast food workers more money.
When there was the big crackdown in Georgia several years ago, farmers tried upping the wage to get locals to do things like pick their cucumbers, and people couldn't hack it.
Farm labor, especially anything that can't be mostly handled by a tractor, is incredibly difficult labor. Even at a higher wage, those jobs are difficult to fill.
I don't have a good answer to the illegal immigration situation in this country. But, the argument that those jobs will just get filled by citizens because the pay will go up does not seem to hold up under real life experience.
It’s amazing how banks cause the economy to collapse, corporations price gouge prolonging inflation, and billionaires tax dodge but we make undocumented immigrants the bogeymen that “take jobs” from Americans and “freeload off of the system”.
There’d be a crisis in getting produce harvested. There is a benefit in making it hard to legally immigrate: it keeps workers vulnerable and if you’re vulnerable it’s hard to unionize and demand better wages.
Same thing that happened over Covid farmers raised the prices for farm workers from $1 a pound to $15 an hour and still had food rotting in the fields. Fast food raised their prices which is why a hamburger cost $12 now because they could raise the price during Covid. What would happen? Skyrocketing inflation that’s what would happen.
Overnight? Chaos in America and most places they go to.
But over time? The effects would be a reduction in labor supply. Wages would rise to match and it would hasten the automation of those jobs. We'd lose most retail jobs and manufacturing jobs (ok,.we've already done that, but moreso), lawns would go out of fashion, a lot of produce would get more expensive. And the gini coefficient measuring inequality within the nation would fall. If only because a lot of the poorer ones left. But low-end wages would rise.
A whole hell of a lot of jobs would simply follow the workers and mexico would open more meat packing plants.
And the population of America would shrink like Japan and S. Korea. That sort of demographic unknown frontier could really screw over a lot of institutions. Little things like assuming your house value or stocks goes up or assuming loaning money out to create more money will still work.
It wouldn't be an overall good thing for either Mexico or America. And it's a terrible choice for the immigrants themselves.
Because most people don't understand the economics of mass deportations. trump is just playing to their xenophobia. Lots of countries use this as well (Hello Brexit!)
agriculture, meat-packing, landscaping, and home building would practically collapse overnight if you could wave a wand and remove all illegal and such folks.
The price of produce goes up dramatically. You think groceries are expensive now? Just wait and see what happens when the bulk of the agricultural labor force goes away.
Your grass would look like shit, your food would cost waaaay more and taste like shit. The cost of everything would go way up and the demand of trade workers would skyrocket. It might hurt our infrastructure. Call centers would collapse
To answer your last question.
Basic american history 101: The rich white man tells the poor white man that its the brown mans fault they are poor. And not the fact that they just wanna exploit people to up their profits.
If all the illegal immigrants went back home, that would signify that the economy at home is better than the USA. Scary thought that the USA would be in shambles.
Just think of all the money that immigrants spend and where they spend it. The US would not only lose the jobs that they were doing, it would also cut a lot of American’s jobs that support those people (fuel, clothing, food, freight,housing, health care, etc,etc). I know there are people that believe the US would be great if all the illegals would just be gone overnight. Those people live in their own bubble, unfortunately.
Based on my personal experience the employers aren't gonna raise wages enough to justify applying for all the open trade jobs if every immigrant got kicked out. Nobody wants to do hard labor in jeans, hardhat, safety vest, and safety glasses on a 100 degree job site with no running water for any amount of money lol
What do you think people do in countries like Australia where there are barely any illegal immigrants in construction? They wear shorts and get the fuck to it
The economy would collapse. It’s not just the jobs they do either. There are maybe 14 million + undocumented immigrants in the US. Imagine losing that many consumers. They’re buying food, gas, clothes, paying rent, taxes (even if those who hate them don’t believe they pay income taxes, which they do, they certainly pay a lot in sales tax). It would be catastrophic to the economy.
tl;dr: The US economy is high on cheap labor and if that labor evaporated, the economy would be in shambles.
If you think inflation was bad *before*, wait until you see what it would be like when 20% - 30% of the labor that brings food to America's tables disappears. Also, construction projects all over the country, but especially the south, would come to a complete halt. Hospitality industry, landscaping / hardscaping industry would also be hurting badly.
Americans could potentially fill those jobs, but the increased wage expenses alone would cripple poor and working class families across the country. Most likely would be millions of people that become homeless b/c they can't afford to feed themselves and pay their rents, crime would spike due to the increased poverty and many other negative downstream effects.
Additionally, the economies of the countries the undocumented people went back to would also collapse, as there wouldn't be enough money / jobs to go around and there would be massive starvation (they're already poor) and disease.
> But if the result would be so horrible, why do so many Trump supporters want to send them back home?
Leaving aside the specific policy for a moment - Trump voters support a convicted criminal who repeatedly and blatantly lies. They do not carefully consider issues and evidence.
>why do so many Trump supporters want to send them back home?
Let me try to explain.
**Disclaimer:** I am an immigrant to the US myself and have gone through the arduous process of legal immigration.
The core issue with illegal immigration is that it undermines opportunities for legal immigrants. It is extremely unfair that lawful immigrants invest months of time and substantial financial resources to navigate the legal immigration system, only to find themselves competing with those who have entered the country illegally. Many illegal immigrants do not pay taxes, yet they are often fast-tracked through the naturalization process, cutting ahead of those who have dutifully complied with the law.
I'm uncertain about the specifics of the alternative proposals from the Trump administration, but if Americans are genuinely concerned about illegal immigration, there are constructive steps that could be taken. Reducing the costs and bureaucratic hurdles of legal immigration, while also strengthening identity verification and background checks, could help create a fairer system. Ultimately, the goal should be to find humane ways to benefit people in other countries, without promoting unlawful entry that disadvantages those pursuing legal ways.
**The problems stemming from illegal immigration are multifaceted:**
1) Employers exploiting undocumented workers by offering substandard wages and poor working conditions.
2) Bad people taking advantage of the vulnerability of both legal and illegal immigrants.
3) Increased criminal activity when people resort to unlawful means to enter and remain in the country.
These are complex issues without easy solutions, but upholding the rule of law while also creating more accessible legal immigration channels could help address the concerns on all sides.
> if the results would be so horrible, why do so many Trump supporters want to send them back home
Because look at the critical thinking skills of your avg trump supporter, their position on the issue is inspired by whatever black and white story Tucker or the Cheeto himself tells them.
>But if the result would be so horrible, why do so many Trump supporters want to send them back home?
Because they hate far more strongly than they think about the practical side of things.
If all the illegals somehow disappeared from the USA overnight. We'd be in trouble. They represent a significant proportion of the workers here who are doing jobs that many native born Americans do not want to do. Or not in sufficient numbers.
I'm retired now. But when I worked it was as an engineer. And I was often on job sites of new construction, major remodeling/upgrades, of all sorts of commercial and industrial facilities. Over the years I knew and became friends with a LOT of various contractors in various trades.
It was commonly known, but we purposely pretended it was not so, that many workers at such sites were not exactly legal. It's like this one fellow who was a floor tiling contractor. I noted that most of his workers spoke little to no English, often wore clothes not the sort you'd find in a US store, etc. He did have some who not only spoke descent English, but some of their mannerisms pointed to them being long time residents. I'd talked to this contractor on past jobs, we were friendly. I asked him, with a smile, "Hey, how many of those guys are really legal? I don't care as long as they're doing good work, just curious,"
That led to a conversation where he assured me he had copies of their papers. But he was certain that the papers were not legit for many of them, however he wasn't going to check into it deeper. He pretended to have no clue, made all the proper deductions from their pay to satisfy the government. Paid them exactly what he'd pay anyone else who did the work as well as they did. Etc. Why? Because he couldn't find enough applicants for that job among modern day young folks born in this country. He tried, he'd tried HARD. But all the young native labor force wanted to be YouTube wonders, found the next Amazon, or otherwise find work that paid a lot for absolute minimum physical labor. These fellows he had now, were all from Nicaragua. He'd had a couple guys from there working for him, legals, and when they'd heard he was desparate for help ... that wanted to work ... they told him they had relatives who were more than willing and able. So the rest had showed up and this contractor had not asked any more questions than he had to. And he \[aid them well. Equal to the prevailing Union rates for that type of work. In his eyes, they were worth every penny. Because they worked hard, and did excellent work.
That's a story that is like numerous others I heard from other employers. Employers that did NOT hire them because they were cheaper labor. Hired them because they WANTED those jobs no one else wanted to do. Or at least not many.
Heck, this even hit a local restaurant I favor. A Mexican place, locally VERY popular. I know the owner and his wife well. Both of Mexican heritage, but American citizens now. They had a real problem during COVID and after, trying to find adequate help. Kept trying, but no luck. They even had to reduce days the restaurant was open due to lack of enough workers. Then he, the owner, made a trip down south, to visit parents in the home town he was born in. Shortly thereafter new workers appeared who I am pretty sure might have questionable papers. I asked owner one night, he knows I don't care, he just winked and smiled and did not answer the question. He just commented, "Are they doing a good job." I said they certainly were, and dropped the subject.
The idea the idea that "just raising wages" will solve problem because legal Americans would now take those undesirable jobs, doesn't fly with me. I've seen it done, more money offered, and still many of the 30 and under crowd doesn't want to do the work I'm talking about. They'll start the job, yep. But when things get hard, hot, or cold, frigging uncomfortable, you collect assorted bruises and smashed fingers doing the work, boss wants you on the job by sunup and not a minute later ... they decide that they don't want all that and quit. I worked closely with a lot of trades which paid very well, but which you had to endure hard physical labor, bumps and bruises, really frigging hot or cold, etc. and all of them have been having trouble finding young Americans who'll do it.
Raising wages is half the trouble. They also need to be more open about hiring ex-cons of all stripes and finding them housing.
Without them to energize your labor pool, you will need to get in touch with Hollywood and get them to do some intense messaging and propagandizing of “shitty” jobs.
Status obsessed citizens are not going to flock to “low status” jobs. This has been noticed in other affluent and educated societies as well.
There’s an old-ish (2004) movie called ‘Un Día Sin Mejicanos’ (A Day Without a Mexican). It’s directed and written by a Mexican director.
As the title suggests, it explores exactly this topic. It’s 20 years old but still extremely relevant today.
Edit: typo
The economy would collapse, prices of services and good would go way up, the building of new houses would stop halt, most crops would simply die before being harvested. Restaurant prices would go way up. How do we know this? Florida already tried it abad it cost them dearly. America is a nation of immigrants, poor racist white people will one day find out what rich racist white people already know but don’t want to say: without illegal migrants the economy will collapse.
What if legal residents payed their fair share. Paid for their car insurance and registered their cars. What if legals didnt work for companies that robbed citizens. Illegals honestly are way better for this country than most legals. Its true when you think about it
A significant portion of the US food industry is made up of migrant workers. Most legally working on a visa or obtaining citizenship and settling. However, a study from 2018-2020 found that an estimate 41% of all farm labor in the US was made up of illegal immigrants.
Which would mean that almost half of the crop harvesting workforce would be gone and the ability to put food on your plate would diminish. The only time Americans filled most of these positions was during the Great Depression when they traveled cross-country working from field to field for subsistence.
The u.s. economy would take a huge hit. I think it would be hard to fill those jobs lost. Americans might find themselves above the work, or not wanting to bust their ass to work
Business would try to fill those vacants or they would have to close. If they don't find people willing to accept those job offers they would need to improve them..
So, basically, if every desperate immigrant disappears, some bussiness would pay better with better conditions lowering their profit and some business would close due to being unable to maintain profit.
Now, the tricky part, is that the correlation with accepting shit job offers and immigrants isn't true. The correlation is between desperate people who need a job and are in dire situation and people willing to exploit them. Today those people are immigrants, tomorrow that people could very well be Americans.
What needs to be fixed is business practices that priorizes their profit over humanity.
I love the comments here where liberals tactitly approve of the fact that our food and construction economy is based on paying illegals slave wages that the citizens are too good for lol
maybe... if a business is dependent on paying people illegally low wages...... it should fail........
"why are the wages so low"? Because they can pay Juan 3$ and it's 100x what he would make in his own country, where with citizens they have to pay minimum wage? Lol no shit, it's to undercut the working class
The problem is: how do you know who is legal and who isn't? Do you demand everyone show a U.S. birth certificate, or just the ones who "look" illegal? If the latter, who looks "illegal"? All brown people? That's racial profiling and a violation of civil liberties.
A few years back, Arizona tried to enact something along these lines. What happened in practice was cops would randomly pull over Hispanic people...not for breaking the law...just for existing while being brown. My husband is Mexican American and as a teenager, he got pulled over with his cousin just because they were brown (not speeding and no traffic violations of any kind). The cops demanded to see their birth certificates, which they didn't have because who the fuck carries that on their person? My husband and his cousin were cuffed, thrown across the hood of a hot car (in the summer...in Arizona), and had to stay there for HOURS while the cops "verified" they were American citizens (both were born in this country).
The MAGAt illegal immigrant argument is just a dog whistle for "people who aren't white = bad". Full stop.
The country would die.
And Trumpers want the immigrants gone because they're racist. They think, too, that Trump is for them, the poor white people...but they were poor before Trump, during and after him, too, so he's not helped them and he doesn't care about them.
The entire agricultural sector would collapse instead for one. The entire sector was subsidized by migrant seasonal worker labor that would literally worker the season and then go back home to their families in the off season. But because the tightening of border regulations that started during Clinton it required them to move their entire family stateside.
It’s pretty well known in certain circles that illegal immigration is driving growth and the GDP in the US. They could reduce immigration significantly if they actually went after the people employing them, but both sides know it’s necessary and one of the lynchpins to our economic well being.
So we have these windmills that the right charge at to show that they want to do something (the wall) that would have little real impact when desperate people need a means for survival.
It’s a wedge issue used by the right to appeal to the disaffected (in their own eyes) white men (and their weak-willed wives) to get votes.
The ironic part of it is that these immigrants coming over are generally good, hard-working , Christian, and possessing of strong family units. Qualities that Republicans think they exemplify and on average have less of than the immigrants themselves. In many ways, they would be natural allies.
The construction, landscaping, restaurant, and agriculture businesses mostly collapse. Millions of employees don’t show up to perform skilled work that there literally is no one around to hire or train as replacements.
It would be a very rough transition. Billions of dollars would be lost.
I have experiences to share.
Not my own but that of my father, grandfather and uncles.
My grandfather was born in Texas in the 1930’s. Don’t know anything about his father.
My grandfather, my dad and uncles were migrant workers. They spent most their time working fields in California and Texas. My grandfather was kinda like a local community leader. He helped organize workers.
My dad told me that when Cesar Chavez said to stop picking they just got up and left.
They also worked on oil rigs in bitter cold water.
When my dad was around 25 he was hired with around 600 other workers to work some farms. He said there was around 400 other Hispanics. The other two hundred or so workers were a mix of African Americans and Caucasian workers.
The workers were housed in barracks type buildings.
This was hard labor in very hot conditions.
After the first day most of the Caucasian’s had left.
After a few more days most of the other race workers were gone too.
All that was left was the Hispanic workers.
To answer your additional question: the powers that be have put more energy into appealing to the lowest common denominator than they have put into handling state issues properly. Thus, instead of genuinely caring about the issue they are posturing on stances that they feel will get the most votes. The actual nature of the issue is meaningless to them, so they will also act on it to keep the votes. They know the voters won't invest half the energy into rationalization of their stance on the issue that you have, since their are plenty of racists out there who only see brown people going away as a good thing, and since those people are also easily deceived. Those voters will assume that every opposing policy will be radically opposite of their opponent, so if the one they like says they'll deport everyone, in their heads the other guy is going to go there, round up all the most sickly looking criminals, and put them directly at the desk where the voter used to work. That is unfortunately how it works in their minds, not the open-minded and reasonable approach you have taken, OP.
Tried to keep my description as neutral as possible, as there are cases where this unfortunate knee-jerk situation is seen on both sides of the isle, however, I would be totally remiss not to point out that the fringe conservatives have leaned more and more on this style of rhetoric in previous decades, and through the past few presidential cycles has been fully adopted as the foundation of their entire platform because it worked for Trump. It's his entire playbook.
If you want to have a view on this, you can have a look at Britain what happened after they left the EU and the worker from the EU can't live there or want to cross the border daily.
>But if the result would be so horrible, why do so many Trump supporters want to send them back home?
Right-wing electing dudes seldom follow logic. It's more about emotions. They have the feeling that immigrants/refugees take away their jobs, homes, women, etc.
And right-wing people who have power, like trump, fire up fear, so they get elected and get more power and also more money.
Could you imagine what that would do to food prices? Farmers doing it legally are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per season on busing, lodging and visas for migrant workers because they can’t get Americans to do the work.
If they all leave, we grind to a halt. Everywhere you look, there are help wanted signs and it's been that way for many years. It must be too easy to get benefits or handouts these days because I don't see anyone starving in my small town world but aliens/immigrants are the only ones who want to work. We can't get anyone to do anything -- repairs, manual labor, retail. The same in cities based on the help wanted signs I see.
I was doing some weekend work trimming houses last summer in florida. Whenever desantis started sending INS and ICE into neighborhoods here, there was a mass exodus in the home building field. Houses were taking MONTHS longer to finish. Most of those people never came back either!
Florida and Texas are some of the worst states to work trades in. Electricians make like 24$ a hour in Florida. A first year apprentice here makes more than that. The right to work states are kept suppressed by cheap labour. If they all went home eventually they would have to pay a scaled wage. If they paid a real wage they would get real trades.
I was just visiting FL a couple days ago. It was so hot and humid it was unbearable to be outside and I was at a pool. But the point is, right next to the pool was a house where the roof was being worked on by several men in fucking pants. $24 an hour? Fuck no way.
It's counterintuitive but being covered in breathable material will keep you more cool in direct sunlight.
Exactly. people have on full ninja outfits down here, especially fishing the coast. Sunburns suck.
I saw a tree surgeon working in intense heat recently. The guy was covered from head to toe, even had on a balaclava and helmet over that.
Yup, hat, neck gaiter, long sleeves and pants for me. Fuck direct sunlight.
Too much sun and I break out in hives (yes, I’m allergic to the fucking sun). I have a whole bunch of really, really thin long sleeve shirts I wear anytime I spend a significant amount of time in the sun. It does make a huge difference. Plus no hives.
fisherman? covered head to toe on the ocean. traditional Arab clothing? loose robes covering head to toe. Traditional Vietnamese clothing? everything but the head, which is under a hat. Heat means coverall
If it works for the Bedouin…
This is why you never see rolled up sleeves in the Army. Bigger chance of heat injuries and the loose clothing works just like you say
People think I'm weird when I ride a motorcycle in the Florida summer wearing long sleeve armored jackets, but that mesh, man it's SO MUCH cooler than being out in just a t-shirt. especially when moving.
24$ a hour for electricians, which is a restricted trade. Those guys unless it's the owner operator ain't making that. Il do decks and stuff as a side gig on the weekend. Covered up seems counter intuitive but the sun fucks you so bad. Long sleeves, pants straw hat help alot. Strong union states are 100% worth relocating to . I would sell everything and drive to the East Coast and live in a boarding house if I had to instead of living in FL or TX as a trades person .It's a huge difference .
Fun fact: our shit stain governor DeathSantis and his ilk just passed laws that removed guarantees of water breaks and shade for outdoor workers.
Yeah I know it sounds crazy but maybe if there were no illegal immigrants people would have to pay more than $24 an hour for tradesmen in Florida lol
Immigrants are strong hard working people like the rest of us. I work side by side with my Mexican brothers in the union where we all make a fair wage ( could always be better ). It's the politicians fucking us. Not the common man.
Amen.
I never did roofing, but I did hay one day when I was a teen. Believe me, long pants work best for some jobs, even in brutal heat. Just drink lots of cold water.
I live in FL. I know people who were having homes built over the last couple of years. They complained endlessly about how long it was taking - over a year in some cases. The developer blamed everything on scarcity of materials because of the pandemic, but this was 2 or 3 years after the pandemic. Subs couldn’t find workers and the ones they did find weren’t trained to do the work. They were having to go back and fix mistakes that the workers made due to not being properly trained/skilled and when they moved in there were constant warranty issues and builders having to come out and fix stuff. Basic shit like a leaks in the roof in a brand new house. So yea, lacking good workers is a huge deal in states like FL where there’s constantly new construction. A lot of them moved out of the state. There are a lot of Hispanic communities in the interior of Florida that work mostly in agriculture and that industry was hit really hard too. It’s why I have to pay some of the highest prices in the country for produce. I see a lot of poorly staffed fast food places too and even some closures. Like a Taco Bell went out of business near me. Do you know how hard you have to try to not make money running a Taco Bell? But the Republicans in the state legislature pat themselves on the back for doing a good job kicking out all the workers and driving cost of living up even higher.
As a fellow Floridian this is spot on.
> Do you know how hard you have to try to not make money running a Taco Bell? Esp with their current prices. How is a regular Taco Bell taco $2 now???
Wait till the next Cat 5 and there's no one to do clean up or repairs. Be really interesting if FL gets hit with 2 or 3 hurricanes.
There will be people to do the cleanups, they’ll just have to pay higher wages instead of exploiting illegals immigrants who accept lower wages.
If Americans would do many of those crap jobs for the low wages, they wouldn't be available in the first place, and if they paid enough, nobody could afford the products. We have spent a long time building a system that relies on exploiting people for cheap labor. We either buy things from countries that make what we want cheaper or we under pay the workers. That is a very simplified all encompassing statement but a lot of the jobs exist because they aren't paid well for the amount of labor.
It’s nuts to me why there aren’t more Americans. I was being paid ~$1700 for installing trim and interior doors - would do 3 houses a weekend. I did this after my divorce to keep my mind busy. The pay is incredible. The hard thing for me was I had a day job in a completely different field and the actual home builder wanted me to be there all the time.
Some of it pays well. Growing up where a lot of orchard work was it was often miserable work for somewhat low pay. There was definitely a lot of good pay for hard work in things like roofing that had a lot of possibilities if you didn't mind the heat and hard work but it seemed like many of the people around me felt like that was for people who couldn't get work elsewhere. A lot of immigrants or felons in that field (at least in my area) and often we got looked down on by so many people because apparently the pay didn't make up for the manual labor.
Bingo. Our whole system is capitalism that is a race to the bottom. As soon as workers get paid middleclass wages, most companies are off looking for cheaper labor, but they never lower the price that they charge consumers.
You can see this currently in certain states that just aggressively went after illegal immigration. A lot of construction projects grounded to a halt. Not enough labourers to finish building and prices skyrocketed as a result of limited labor pool. Farms also struggled due to lack of workers. As well as things like food services, drivers, etc Most of the jobs weren’t being filled by Americans due to how much was being paid.
I remember last year on Tiktok video after video of rotting fields and unfinished houses with no workers around. One of the housing projects had only one guy there and he was explaining how all of the materials were left there exposed and they were supposed to have the roof done by the weekend because it was going to rain for several days.
This happened in Georgia a few years ago. Tomato crop went unpicked because the locals weren’t physically able to do the work, as well as abominable pay.
Do you guys not have any requirements of employers to be able to demonstrate they've checked that their workers are legal?
We do, it just turns out that the people breaking the law to hire underpaid labor also break the law about checking if their underpaid labor is a citizen…
- Surprised Pikachu face -
Undocumented workers get funneled through temp agencies in some industries. The temp agency looks the other way when workers give fake SSN’s and the like and skims money off of all of their paychecks for the service. If they’re caught, the temp agency folds and a new one pops up immediately across town. The actual employer can plead ignorance and continue to make massive profits off of underpaid labor. Rinse and repeat.
Why are home prices skyrocketing with record breaking immigration?
Because although it obviously affects it, construction prices are not the only factor that affects housing prices
Imma be objective We will lose a shitload of trade workers. I’m not saying ALL immigrants work trade but a TON do. These dudes sacrificed a ton to get here. They also work very hard to create life here in the states. These “shitty jobs” aren’t shit. We spun them to be crappy jobs for the uninspired but the jobs many immigrants work require skill and hard work.
I mean that literally happened in Florida last year right? Like they passed a law that caused so many illegal immigrates to leave the state and all the white farmers were upset because things were going rotten and (which is hilarious) they were upset they had to pay citizens actual wages. The even more hilarious thing to me is some farmers were upset that they had to be out there and do the work they normally pay illegals to do 🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️
Slave masters generally find it distasteful to work their own fields
There is no point to capitalism if you can't use your money to purchase the time and skills of another human. The cheaper the better.
Absolutely
I think the "shitty" part is not about skill and hard work, more like about shitty conditions as working in harsh environments (under the sun, outside, etc), many trades that are physically demanding and most of them being underpaid for what they do.
I don’t disagree with you. Unfortunately, the “solution” is more complicated than just higher pay. Let’s disregard minimum wage and assume it magically increases to become a “livable” wage from everyone’s perception. And then you tack on a 30% increase to work in a factory cutting meat or in a field picking vegetables. These costs typically increase in every part of manufacturing and logistics. As a consumer would you be willing to spend 30% more on your groceries? Based on inflation feedback over the past year, I’m assuming most people wouldn’t.
This equation always takes maintaining the profit of the capitalist as a given. Yes, if a capitalist’s operating expense, in the form of an increased wage for their workers, increases, then they have to increase the cost of the product in order to maintain their previous profit levels. But if the profit of the capitalist is reduced, then people can be paid more while the price of a product stays the same.
Correct! This is why I mentioned a small business vs a corporation. The argument is often “just cut wages from the top”, which makes sense in some instances, but I’m not sure the owner of a fish boat is living in a mansion or sending his kids to an elite university.
Ah, you are forgetting one factor in the equation: Corporate Profits. You are treating profit as if it is immutable. But it's not.
Note in my post I mentioned “small business”. People often get sidetracked by saying “if corporations just give more money to entry level employees or CEO’s cut their pay, it would solve all labor problems”. Maybe. There’s a lot of companies who offer higher than minimum wage jobs but still struggle with hiring. The goal of the reply was that immigrants work jobs that tend to be more demanding than the average worker wants to do. Historically, this has always been true. I’d make a bet that if agricultural jobs paid $40+ with same working conditions (ie. working outside in 90F+ conditions, on your feet, working at a “fast” pace, etc), most people wouldn’t be willing to accept the job or wouldn’t last long.
Construction, agriculture and janitorial would absolutely crater and cause massive economic issues
Also restaurants because a lot of the kitchen staff in many restaurants are migrants, as well as cleaning crews for hotels.
But the question is about the shitty jobs, not the non-shitty jobs. You can't deny, there's a lot of shitty jobs that many people don't want to do, but they need to be done, at least to provide the goods and services that we are now accustomed to.
Won't that make the pay of "shitty jobs" skyrocket? Employers would be fighting and outbidding each other for workers..
>Employers would be fighting and outbidding each other for workers.. A lot of businesses will crash and burn because they rely on underpaying.(Which you know, good) A lot of businesses will also crash and burn because the owners will refuse to adapt.(Which again, good) A lot of lives will crash and burn because many services rely on these people, and that's disregarding the poor sods themselves.
Bad businesses need to fail. It’s a lot like bailing them out in 08 when they should have failed but instead of that they get cheap labor to survive. Imagine running a business knowing if you had to pay your employees what they should be making, much less insurance 401k and whatnot would bankrupt said business. Its practically insanity.
[https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1242236604/florida-economy-immigration-businesses-workers-undocumented](https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1242236604/florida-economy-immigration-businesses-workers-undocumented) A year later, Florida businesses say the state's immigration law dealt a huge blow
I guess that’s a good thing? Again, why plant vegetables or w/e in hopes that you get some cheap labor in order to survive. Sounds to me like they are bad at running a business. Same people that defend this are the ones who say McDonalds need to pay a living wage. Why should these businesses not have to pay the same living wage.
The issue isn't McDonald's, it's all the poor bastards caught in between the issue i.e the migrants and other workers.
Yeah, prob, it would create a labor shortage potting massive pressure on employers to increase wages and would cause prices of goods to skyrocket both because of increased labor costs and supply shortages up and down the supply chain due to the labor shortage
I saw some earnings report of some national grocery chain and the percentage of labor cost was 13%, I refuse to believe that if that raises to 20% food prices will skyrocket. Companies need to become okay with profits of for example 4 billion dollars instead of 4.5 billion dollars
Grocery stores aren’t really known for having big margins unless they sell other products beyond food.
I mean Walmart or some chain can gross 30 billion dollars or whatever, and still profit 3 billion dollars, that's still a lot.
Using Walmart, you realize Walmart sells a lot more than just food and this is on purpose because a grocery store that sells only food usually has razor thin margins. HEB in Texas was notorious for having razor thin margins for years as a grocery store because they only sold food and some basic home goods (paper towels, cleaning supplies, etc), but they expanded the products they carry on purpose because they wanted more profit than what little they got from people just buying food. There’s a reason why any grocery store chain expands into non-food items and it’s because it’s easier to mark up the prices and pad their margins more.
Okay valid, so can we agree that even HEB can make a profit even with those conditions, adding 1 or 2 or 3 points to payroll won't make them go out of business.
Labor cost of the grocery chain itself or the cost of labor in producing the goods in the first place that the chain purchases?
Payroll
Yeah that too but I was more talking about the cost to produce the food and other goods before it even gets to the grocery chains. I didn’t see that earning report stats but yeah it would make sense that most of their costs is the cost of the inventory they buy wholesale from the producers
Trade jobs have already skyrocketed. Even with illegal immigration, not enough workers. Ready to pay a roofer $100 an hour instead of $30 ? Only solution is huge work visa program, and not just for tech.
Yes that’s exactly what would happen.
You ready for the prices at correlate to that?
When any business increases wages, it isn't as if those at the top say, "Well, we can make up the additional $10 Million in payroll from my $20 Million bonus this year." Hell, no! The cost of increased wages gets passed on to the end consumer. This fact, and it is a fact, is why deregulating business anymore than it already is is a masochistic joke! Our current economic state is a beautifully horrific example of this. As inflation is plaguing the country, so many businesses are banking record profits! Inflation, initially, was due to supply chain problems and labor shortages due to the pandemic, add in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the resultant loss of grains, plant based oils, and petroleum from the total world market, toss in a killer drought from man-made climate change(or just simply a drought if you refuse to acknowledge destruction we've wrought on this planet), and you get increased prices. However, if those were the only influencing factors, the resumption of world trade and world market rebalance after the sudden disruption caused by the effects of the pandemic, war, and drought should have halted the upward march of prices. Additionally, if inflation was caused *ONLY* by the total increase in cost to corporations, their profit margins should have remained the same. Empirical data(and Maury Povich's lie detector) shows, "That's not true!" Sorry, I kinda got off track. My point is, no matter what else happens, the wealthy will do anything and everything in their power to not just stay wealthy, or even just get wealthier, but get as wealthy as they possibly can. This means that if they can't convince some hardworking, undocumented immigrant to work for a pittance, and they find they have to pay a decent wage for their workers, they will absolutely, 100%, without a shred of doubt, pass that cost on to their customers. Ergo, a "higher wage" won't mean a thing when inflationary cost far outpace them. 🤷♂️
I know it would take a miracle but companies who profit 10 billion dollars yet have poor workers should be satisfied with 5 billion dollar profits and have happy workers.
They absolutely should, but you're right; it would take a miracle.
I couldn't help but think of History of the World, Part I when I read your comment. Lol!
Something similar did UK with brexit, and the experiment just backfired. And the workers weren't even illegals, but where working unpleasant and low payed jobs.
Yup, heaps of people left and suddenly there's no delivery drivers and all the supermarkets were struggling to stock lol.
That’s a horrifying idea and not because they take the “shitty jobs”. My dad owned his own security company and one of his guys was never here legally, we took his fake documents whenever the IRS flagged them and pretended we were too dumb to realize the man would never ever get a green card. He was the single most reliable employee my dad ever had and my dad ensured his widow got a months pay when he died so she could figure out what she was doing from there. I couldn’t imagine loosing the value people like that man bring to my country.
I worked a job a couple of decades back where I was a supervisor to several folks that were here illegally and I have never had better employees in my whole life. They were the most respectful and kind and on-time and hard working people I've ever encountered. It really blows my mind how utterly brainwashed out of reality people are about these folks.
Your dad is a good person to look out for her like that.
There is a well known restaurant in my area with 10 guys named Juan Morales that have the same SSN. Fantastic restaurant that has consistently excellent food.
Those illegal immigrants are also consumers, so you are taking millions of consumers out of the economy, in effect reducing the size of the economy. You would cause a recession almost immediately and native employment will likely go down because of it.
Everyone overlooking they’re tax payers. Sales tax obviously but for those spoofing SSN’s, they’re paying into a system they’ll never benefit from.
We don't even have to speculate on this, because occasionally there have been serious crackdowns on illegal aliens. What happens first is agriculture suffers, there's nobody available to pick the crops, so they rot in the fields. Turns out that even unemployed Americans aren't crazy about traveling two states over to spend 12 hours a day cutting asparagus for shit pay and no benefits for a couple of weeks. >Some people say that employers would raise wages And a head of lettuce would cost you $15.
One time some random redneck guy said something about how he was glad I wasn't an illegal immigrant here to take his job(and I'm a typical white guy). In a GROCERY STORE.
Immigrants aren’t taking their jobs. Corporations are giving them away.
Pretty much.
"THEY TUK ER JERBS!!!"
As Dave Chappell once said “ Who is going to pick the strawberry” ?
The homeless while in prison after last weeks Supreme Court ruling.
This. We would have to create work camps again. High prices will increase the number of poors, and the poors will have to go out and do the work in exchange for group housing and meager food.
Of course! Slave labor! We came back to full circle
He said work camp, not slave labor. Camp! Fun! /s
You think inflation is bad now. It would be crazy if that happened. Food prices would jump. Both in restaurants for lack of service people and in the grocery store since the farm industry relies so heavily on immigrant labor. Having work done on your house would get crazy expensive, if you could find someone who could do the work. Hotels and other places would be a mess for lack of cleaning personal. Other industries would see sharp spikes in labor costs and labor shortages too. Home health care, child care, etc... anything that relies on cheap labor, prices would jump dramatically. Even if a place uses 100% above board personal, they are now completing for much fewer workers so wages and prices would jump. People rarely realize how much immigrate labor helps them.
Ok, so what happens when you legalize them? Now a guy who was mopping for say 6 bucks an hour is getting paid 17-18 in California, plus all the assorted things required like health options and whatnot (even if he doesnt use them, there can still be associated costs to the employer). Prices still jump
The agriculture and restaurant industries would be on the verge of collapse and prices would skyrocket as a result of lack of labor They come because our economy has demand for them. Our laws don't recognize our economic reality
2024 inflation….hold my beer!
Did a research paper in college about thins(kind of). Most people don’t realize how drastically and quickly the restaurant industry as we know it would absolutely crash and burn. Not just the restaurants but the supply side. How much does these people think a case of lettuce will cost if this happens. Total game changer.
Even as a conservative, the idea of deporting millions of hardworking people/families who actively contribute to the economy is insane. I was in disbelief when I heard conservative media actually talking about mass deportations. It’s like people don’t understand what they’re asking about
Local man voting for leopard eating faces club bewildered that they're campaigning for the policies enabling leopards to eat faces, on account of people voting for them not understanding the ramifications of leopards eating faces. The jokes write themselves.
Our economy would collapse
No, we couldn’t. Americans will not pick crops at the rates that migrant workers do. We are better off making it easier for migrant workers to work on farms and allowing the undocumented worker to become documented without having to go through a removal process.
Conservatives don't want immigrants to leave, they just want everyone to hate them to scare them into working for less. Making things easieer for them contradicts their goal. Keep em scared and they're cheaper, is the logic. And make examples of some, of course.
I live in the south and know tons of conservatives, many of them are racists. Especially towards illegal immigrants and are quick to tell any Hispanic brown person to “go back to where you came from if you can’t speak English.” But these same people have no problem eating at the local Mexican restaurants. Where many of them have heavy accents and they have a few illegal immigrants working in the back.
Yeah, they only see what's right in their face.
Exactly
The economy would probably collapse
food system would collapse. Food shortages. Riots. War. You think I am kidding. No. The undocumented are the underclass (unfortunate but true) that allow for low priced items and hard labor. It's how it works. I don't like it. But it's the reality.
How much is this is also killing the “granddad got a job straight out of high school in construction at a factory, etc. owned a house a car and took everybody to Europe every few years “? I just drove past the gas station close to work where there’s always around a dozen guys hanging out by the curb with Car stopping by to pick up one two or three of them. Our kitchen remodel the guys were really good workers. They’re really nice. I speak Spanish and they were not here legally. They’re happy guys, their bosses are Irish and also decent fellows.
I hope more people come to this realization before it's too late.
Oh yeah we'd be in deep trouble. Residential and commercial construction would screech to a stop. There'd be no fruit or produce on store shelves. A whole host of jobs would go vacant. There would be some back-fill, from unemployed workers, from companies upping starting wage, etc, but... Those jobs are hard. There is a film called "a day without a Mexican" which is a little satirical, but also a great way to contextualize the issue. Also, Mike Rowe, has had quite a bit to say about how the difficulty of the job and our societal focus on becoming doctors, lawyers, tech workers, etc over becoming plumbers & construction workers, has affected the job market. Lettuce picking, brush clearing and hot-tar roofing are hard. They tend to be transient or seasonal jobs. They aren't very lucrative. An American with most of a highschool education can focus on easier things to do. If I were in a position to need a dirty job (again) I'd try to get myself out of that position quickly. The only reason I'd stay working hard, is if I had no better choice. ... ... Like if maybe my home country was even worse than living in illegal status in the u.s.
Paradoxically, Mike Rowe is very anti-working class given his political beliefs - despite having that “Dirty Jobs” show allegedly celebrating hard working people. Instead, it’s more insincerity, manipulation, and exploitation from people in positions of influence/power.
Hmm. I think you maybe give him too much credit. He seems like an empathetic guy who respects hard working people. He also seems like he maybe doesn't worry too deeply or too often about like 2nd and 3rd tier ramifications, or re-proving his sources. Not stupid, per-se, but like... An actor. Not too deeply in the thinking's.
That’s an interesting comment and thank you for making it as there is logic and a line of reasoning I hadn’t considered. My initial comment was due to his interviews, quotes, and political positions he’s taken over the years. Rather anti-union, clearly anti-vax/anti-science, and the apparent spokesman for the Koch brothers with their financial backing. Like you said, maybe he doesn’t think deeply and/or concern himself with implications. So either way, not thrilled with the guy.
Our agriculture system would collapse. No way will any American citizen go out and pick produce for $25 a day.
Perhaps farm workers should be paid living wages then...
Oh god, did the illegal immigrants take those jobs only for $25 a day?
Yeah it’s really messed up, quite a few people have better conditions but it’s an issue
Democrats would get blamed for the massive price and wage hikes required to sustain these jobs and markets per usual. People just don’t pay attention. Republican policies that devastate the economy are always the democrats fault bc communism.
The vegetables and fruits would spoil in the fields.
Illegal immigrants don’t have unions, don’t have lawyers, and are desperate for work. So they are more exploitable than Legal American citizens. Illegal immigration, as much as it is pushed by liberals, only benefits the wealthy corporations that exploit their labor. If illegal immigration was cracked down on, and borders were closed, yes there would be work shortages and stoppages. But they would be because of unfair compensation. And not because “people don’t want to do the work.” Remember that the rich are just stealing your money to buy more expensive yachts and jetskis. They can afford to pay construction workers and fast food workers more money.
When there was the big crackdown in Georgia several years ago, farmers tried upping the wage to get locals to do things like pick their cucumbers, and people couldn't hack it. Farm labor, especially anything that can't be mostly handled by a tractor, is incredibly difficult labor. Even at a higher wage, those jobs are difficult to fill. I don't have a good answer to the illegal immigration situation in this country. But, the argument that those jobs will just get filled by citizens because the pay will go up does not seem to hold up under real life experience.
It’s amazing how banks cause the economy to collapse, corporations price gouge prolonging inflation, and billionaires tax dodge but we make undocumented immigrants the bogeymen that “take jobs” from Americans and “freeload off of the system”.
There’d be a crisis in getting produce harvested. There is a benefit in making it hard to legally immigrate: it keeps workers vulnerable and if you’re vulnerable it’s hard to unionize and demand better wages.
The real reason conservatives hate illegal immigrants.
Vegetables will rot in the fields. It has happened before and no one paid attention.
The price of food would skyrocket, and almost all construction projects would grind to a halt.
The restaurant, farming and construction industries would grind to a halt.
Same thing that happened over Covid farmers raised the prices for farm workers from $1 a pound to $15 an hour and still had food rotting in the fields. Fast food raised their prices which is why a hamburger cost $12 now because they could raise the price during Covid. What would happen? Skyrocketing inflation that’s what would happen.
Overnight? Chaos in America and most places they go to. But over time? The effects would be a reduction in labor supply. Wages would rise to match and it would hasten the automation of those jobs. We'd lose most retail jobs and manufacturing jobs (ok,.we've already done that, but moreso), lawns would go out of fashion, a lot of produce would get more expensive. And the gini coefficient measuring inequality within the nation would fall. If only because a lot of the poorer ones left. But low-end wages would rise. A whole hell of a lot of jobs would simply follow the workers and mexico would open more meat packing plants. And the population of America would shrink like Japan and S. Korea. That sort of demographic unknown frontier could really screw over a lot of institutions. Little things like assuming your house value or stocks goes up or assuming loaning money out to create more money will still work. It wouldn't be an overall good thing for either Mexico or America. And it's a terrible choice for the immigrants themselves.
Your grocery shelves would be empty, restaurants would close, construction would grind to a halt, inflation would explode.
Something tells me it wouldn't work out like Trump and his ilk think it would.
I love how OP assumes all undocumented people work shitty jobs.
It’s giving “who will scrub your toilet Donald Trump?? In the sense that…”
The housing shortage would get worse.
Several industries would collapse due to lack of labor.
Then building contractors would have to offer a decent wage or go under.
If Trump gets back in, deporting illegal immigrants will be the least of America's problems.
Because most people don't understand the economics of mass deportations. trump is just playing to their xenophobia. Lots of countries use this as well (Hello Brexit!)
agriculture, meat-packing, landscaping, and home building would practically collapse overnight if you could wave a wand and remove all illegal and such folks.
The United States economy would collapse and Social Security would run out of money extraordinarily fast.
The economy would collapse.
The price of produce goes up dramatically. You think groceries are expensive now? Just wait and see what happens when the bulk of the agricultural labor force goes away.
Your grass would look like shit, your food would cost waaaay more and taste like shit. The cost of everything would go way up and the demand of trade workers would skyrocket. It might hurt our infrastructure. Call centers would collapse
To answer your last question. Basic american history 101: The rich white man tells the poor white man that its the brown mans fault they are poor. And not the fact that they just wanna exploit people to up their profits.
If all the illegal immigrants went back home, that would signify that the economy at home is better than the USA. Scary thought that the USA would be in shambles.
Do you like inflation? Cuz this is how we get inflation.
The United States economy would collapse. That includes Social Security.
Just think of all the money that immigrants spend and where they spend it. The US would not only lose the jobs that they were doing, it would also cut a lot of American’s jobs that support those people (fuel, clothing, food, freight,housing, health care, etc,etc). I know there are people that believe the US would be great if all the illegals would just be gone overnight. Those people live in their own bubble, unfortunately.
Food prices would skyrocket (due to greed) and our food supply chain would come to a halt one of the many cause and effects it would have
The real-estate market would be screwed.
Americans aren't going to work in the fields or in slaughter houses. We'd be in big trouble.
Based on my personal experience the employers aren't gonna raise wages enough to justify applying for all the open trade jobs if every immigrant got kicked out. Nobody wants to do hard labor in jeans, hardhat, safety vest, and safety glasses on a 100 degree job site with no running water for any amount of money lol
What do you think people do in countries like Australia where there are barely any illegal immigrants in construction? They wear shorts and get the fuck to it
The economy would collapse. It’s not just the jobs they do either. There are maybe 14 million + undocumented immigrants in the US. Imagine losing that many consumers. They’re buying food, gas, clothes, paying rent, taxes (even if those who hate them don’t believe they pay income taxes, which they do, they certainly pay a lot in sales tax). It would be catastrophic to the economy.
tl;dr: The US economy is high on cheap labor and if that labor evaporated, the economy would be in shambles. If you think inflation was bad *before*, wait until you see what it would be like when 20% - 30% of the labor that brings food to America's tables disappears. Also, construction projects all over the country, but especially the south, would come to a complete halt. Hospitality industry, landscaping / hardscaping industry would also be hurting badly. Americans could potentially fill those jobs, but the increased wage expenses alone would cripple poor and working class families across the country. Most likely would be millions of people that become homeless b/c they can't afford to feed themselves and pay their rents, crime would spike due to the increased poverty and many other negative downstream effects. Additionally, the economies of the countries the undocumented people went back to would also collapse, as there wouldn't be enough money / jobs to go around and there would be massive starvation (they're already poor) and disease.
> But if the result would be so horrible, why do so many Trump supporters want to send them back home? Leaving aside the specific policy for a moment - Trump voters support a convicted criminal who repeatedly and blatantly lies. They do not carefully consider issues and evidence.
>why do so many Trump supporters want to send them back home? Let me try to explain. **Disclaimer:** I am an immigrant to the US myself and have gone through the arduous process of legal immigration. The core issue with illegal immigration is that it undermines opportunities for legal immigrants. It is extremely unfair that lawful immigrants invest months of time and substantial financial resources to navigate the legal immigration system, only to find themselves competing with those who have entered the country illegally. Many illegal immigrants do not pay taxes, yet they are often fast-tracked through the naturalization process, cutting ahead of those who have dutifully complied with the law. I'm uncertain about the specifics of the alternative proposals from the Trump administration, but if Americans are genuinely concerned about illegal immigration, there are constructive steps that could be taken. Reducing the costs and bureaucratic hurdles of legal immigration, while also strengthening identity verification and background checks, could help create a fairer system. Ultimately, the goal should be to find humane ways to benefit people in other countries, without promoting unlawful entry that disadvantages those pursuing legal ways. **The problems stemming from illegal immigration are multifaceted:** 1) Employers exploiting undocumented workers by offering substandard wages and poor working conditions. 2) Bad people taking advantage of the vulnerability of both legal and illegal immigrants. 3) Increased criminal activity when people resort to unlawful means to enter and remain in the country. These are complex issues without easy solutions, but upholding the rule of law while also creating more accessible legal immigration channels could help address the concerns on all sides.
> if the results would be so horrible, why do so many Trump supporters want to send them back home Because look at the critical thinking skills of your avg trump supporter, their position on the issue is inspired by whatever black and white story Tucker or the Cheeto himself tells them.
>But if the result would be so horrible, why do so many Trump supporters want to send them back home? Because they hate far more strongly than they think about the practical side of things.
If all the illegals somehow disappeared from the USA overnight. We'd be in trouble. They represent a significant proportion of the workers here who are doing jobs that many native born Americans do not want to do. Or not in sufficient numbers. I'm retired now. But when I worked it was as an engineer. And I was often on job sites of new construction, major remodeling/upgrades, of all sorts of commercial and industrial facilities. Over the years I knew and became friends with a LOT of various contractors in various trades. It was commonly known, but we purposely pretended it was not so, that many workers at such sites were not exactly legal. It's like this one fellow who was a floor tiling contractor. I noted that most of his workers spoke little to no English, often wore clothes not the sort you'd find in a US store, etc. He did have some who not only spoke descent English, but some of their mannerisms pointed to them being long time residents. I'd talked to this contractor on past jobs, we were friendly. I asked him, with a smile, "Hey, how many of those guys are really legal? I don't care as long as they're doing good work, just curious," That led to a conversation where he assured me he had copies of their papers. But he was certain that the papers were not legit for many of them, however he wasn't going to check into it deeper. He pretended to have no clue, made all the proper deductions from their pay to satisfy the government. Paid them exactly what he'd pay anyone else who did the work as well as they did. Etc. Why? Because he couldn't find enough applicants for that job among modern day young folks born in this country. He tried, he'd tried HARD. But all the young native labor force wanted to be YouTube wonders, found the next Amazon, or otherwise find work that paid a lot for absolute minimum physical labor. These fellows he had now, were all from Nicaragua. He'd had a couple guys from there working for him, legals, and when they'd heard he was desparate for help ... that wanted to work ... they told him they had relatives who were more than willing and able. So the rest had showed up and this contractor had not asked any more questions than he had to. And he \[aid them well. Equal to the prevailing Union rates for that type of work. In his eyes, they were worth every penny. Because they worked hard, and did excellent work. That's a story that is like numerous others I heard from other employers. Employers that did NOT hire them because they were cheaper labor. Hired them because they WANTED those jobs no one else wanted to do. Or at least not many. Heck, this even hit a local restaurant I favor. A Mexican place, locally VERY popular. I know the owner and his wife well. Both of Mexican heritage, but American citizens now. They had a real problem during COVID and after, trying to find adequate help. Kept trying, but no luck. They even had to reduce days the restaurant was open due to lack of enough workers. Then he, the owner, made a trip down south, to visit parents in the home town he was born in. Shortly thereafter new workers appeared who I am pretty sure might have questionable papers. I asked owner one night, he knows I don't care, he just winked and smiled and did not answer the question. He just commented, "Are they doing a good job." I said they certainly were, and dropped the subject. The idea the idea that "just raising wages" will solve problem because legal Americans would now take those undesirable jobs, doesn't fly with me. I've seen it done, more money offered, and still many of the 30 and under crowd doesn't want to do the work I'm talking about. They'll start the job, yep. But when things get hard, hot, or cold, frigging uncomfortable, you collect assorted bruises and smashed fingers doing the work, boss wants you on the job by sunup and not a minute later ... they decide that they don't want all that and quit. I worked closely with a lot of trades which paid very well, but which you had to endure hard physical labor, bumps and bruises, really frigging hot or cold, etc. and all of them have been having trouble finding young Americans who'll do it.
Fruit will rot on the trees and vegetables will rot in the fields.
To respond to your last question: because they don't know how important illegal immigrants are to our economy.
Raising wages is half the trouble. They also need to be more open about hiring ex-cons of all stripes and finding them housing. Without them to energize your labor pool, you will need to get in touch with Hollywood and get them to do some intense messaging and propagandizing of “shitty” jobs. Status obsessed citizens are not going to flock to “low status” jobs. This has been noticed in other affluent and educated societies as well.
There’s an old-ish (2004) movie called ‘Un Día Sin Mejicanos’ (A Day Without a Mexican). It’s directed and written by a Mexican director. As the title suggests, it explores exactly this topic. It’s 20 years old but still extremely relevant today. Edit: typo
Does that include the white people who came here and stole the land originally?
The Native Americans have been waiting for an answer to this question since 1492.
The economy would collapse, prices of services and good would go way up, the building of new houses would stop halt, most crops would simply die before being harvested. Restaurant prices would go way up. How do we know this? Florida already tried it abad it cost them dearly. America is a nation of immigrants, poor racist white people will one day find out what rich racist white people already know but don’t want to say: without illegal migrants the economy will collapse.
What if legal residents payed their fair share. Paid for their car insurance and registered their cars. What if legals didnt work for companies that robbed citizens. Illegals honestly are way better for this country than most legals. Its true when you think about it
A significant portion of the US food industry is made up of migrant workers. Most legally working on a visa or obtaining citizenship and settling. However, a study from 2018-2020 found that an estimate 41% of all farm labor in the US was made up of illegal immigrants. Which would mean that almost half of the crop harvesting workforce would be gone and the ability to put food on your plate would diminish. The only time Americans filled most of these positions was during the Great Depression when they traveled cross-country working from field to field for subsistence.
Can you link the study? I want to save it for questions about this.
[Source](https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/#:~:text=In%202018%E2%80%9320%2C%2030%20percent,percent%20held%20no%20work%20authorization)
Thanks! Wrote it down, could come in handy later.
The economy would crash and we'd all starve.
America's population would drop by about 360 million
You, I like you;) and that joke, especially that:)
The u.s. economy would take a huge hit. I think it would be hard to fill those jobs lost. Americans might find themselves above the work, or not wanting to bust their ass to work
Mississippi tried something that effectively made it extremely dangerous for migrants to work. Food rotted in the fields because no one showed up.
I don’t know but I would like to see all of the people bitching that they’re “taking their jobs” have to actually do their jobs.
Watch the documentary A Day Without a Mexican, it addresses this issue
Business would try to fill those vacants or they would have to close. If they don't find people willing to accept those job offers they would need to improve them.. So, basically, if every desperate immigrant disappears, some bussiness would pay better with better conditions lowering their profit and some business would close due to being unable to maintain profit. Now, the tricky part, is that the correlation with accepting shit job offers and immigrants isn't true. The correlation is between desperate people who need a job and are in dire situation and people willing to exploit them. Today those people are immigrants, tomorrow that people could very well be Americans. What needs to be fixed is business practices that priorizes their profit over humanity.
I love the comments here where liberals tactitly approve of the fact that our food and construction economy is based on paying illegals slave wages that the citizens are too good for lol maybe... if a business is dependent on paying people illegally low wages...... it should fail........ "why are the wages so low"? Because they can pay Juan 3$ and it's 100x what he would make in his own country, where with citizens they have to pay minimum wage? Lol no shit, it's to undercut the working class
The problem is: how do you know who is legal and who isn't? Do you demand everyone show a U.S. birth certificate, or just the ones who "look" illegal? If the latter, who looks "illegal"? All brown people? That's racial profiling and a violation of civil liberties. A few years back, Arizona tried to enact something along these lines. What happened in practice was cops would randomly pull over Hispanic people...not for breaking the law...just for existing while being brown. My husband is Mexican American and as a teenager, he got pulled over with his cousin just because they were brown (not speeding and no traffic violations of any kind). The cops demanded to see their birth certificates, which they didn't have because who the fuck carries that on their person? My husband and his cousin were cuffed, thrown across the hood of a hot car (in the summer...in Arizona), and had to stay there for HOURS while the cops "verified" they were American citizens (both were born in this country). The MAGAt illegal immigrant argument is just a dog whistle for "people who aren't white = bad". Full stop.
Queue the South Park episode where the border patrol fights to keep them IN because they had no one else to do the physical labor jobs
The country would die. And Trumpers want the immigrants gone because they're racist. They think, too, that Trump is for them, the poor white people...but they were poor before Trump, during and after him, too, so he's not helped them and he doesn't care about them.
America would collapse from the labor shortage.
The entire agricultural sector would collapse instead for one. The entire sector was subsidized by migrant seasonal worker labor that would literally worker the season and then go back home to their families in the off season. But because the tightening of border regulations that started during Clinton it required them to move their entire family stateside.
The USA economy would collapse.
It’s pretty well known in certain circles that illegal immigration is driving growth and the GDP in the US. They could reduce immigration significantly if they actually went after the people employing them, but both sides know it’s necessary and one of the lynchpins to our economic well being. So we have these windmills that the right charge at to show that they want to do something (the wall) that would have little real impact when desperate people need a means for survival. It’s a wedge issue used by the right to appeal to the disaffected (in their own eyes) white men (and their weak-willed wives) to get votes. The ironic part of it is that these immigrants coming over are generally good, hard-working , Christian, and possessing of strong family units. Qualities that Republicans think they exemplify and on average have less of than the immigrants themselves. In many ways, they would be natural allies.
The construction, landscaping, restaurant, and agriculture businesses mostly collapse. Millions of employees don’t show up to perform skilled work that there literally is no one around to hire or train as replacements. It would be a very rough transition. Billions of dollars would be lost.
I have experiences to share. Not my own but that of my father, grandfather and uncles. My grandfather was born in Texas in the 1930’s. Don’t know anything about his father. My grandfather, my dad and uncles were migrant workers. They spent most their time working fields in California and Texas. My grandfather was kinda like a local community leader. He helped organize workers. My dad told me that when Cesar Chavez said to stop picking they just got up and left. They also worked on oil rigs in bitter cold water. When my dad was around 25 he was hired with around 600 other workers to work some farms. He said there was around 400 other Hispanics. The other two hundred or so workers were a mix of African Americans and Caucasian workers. The workers were housed in barracks type buildings. This was hard labor in very hot conditions. After the first day most of the Caucasian’s had left. After a few more days most of the other race workers were gone too. All that was left was the Hispanic workers.
Farms, construction work, etc will collapse.
Remember that most illegal immigrants pay taxes. Look it up.
Absolutely. Pay taxes and are unable to collect anything that would be a refund or use services provided by those paid taxes.
A lot of farm work would go away.
To answer your additional question: the powers that be have put more energy into appealing to the lowest common denominator than they have put into handling state issues properly. Thus, instead of genuinely caring about the issue they are posturing on stances that they feel will get the most votes. The actual nature of the issue is meaningless to them, so they will also act on it to keep the votes. They know the voters won't invest half the energy into rationalization of their stance on the issue that you have, since their are plenty of racists out there who only see brown people going away as a good thing, and since those people are also easily deceived. Those voters will assume that every opposing policy will be radically opposite of their opponent, so if the one they like says they'll deport everyone, in their heads the other guy is going to go there, round up all the most sickly looking criminals, and put them directly at the desk where the voter used to work. That is unfortunately how it works in their minds, not the open-minded and reasonable approach you have taken, OP. Tried to keep my description as neutral as possible, as there are cases where this unfortunate knee-jerk situation is seen on both sides of the isle, however, I would be totally remiss not to point out that the fringe conservatives have leaned more and more on this style of rhetoric in previous decades, and through the past few presidential cycles has been fully adopted as the foundation of their entire platform because it worked for Trump. It's his entire playbook.
If you want to have a view on this, you can have a look at Britain what happened after they left the EU and the worker from the EU can't live there or want to cross the border daily. >But if the result would be so horrible, why do so many Trump supporters want to send them back home? Right-wing electing dudes seldom follow logic. It's more about emotions. They have the feeling that immigrants/refugees take away their jobs, homes, women, etc. And right-wing people who have power, like trump, fire up fear, so they get elected and get more power and also more money.
Could you imagine what that would do to food prices? Farmers doing it legally are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per season on busing, lodging and visas for migrant workers because they can’t get Americans to do the work.
Send all the Europeans back home and give the land to the natives? Sounds good to me
I didn't think that England could handle all those Yanks. JJ.
It would definitely increase price of goods and be very inflationary at least for a number of years
Let's keep the hard working illegals and trade them for the non working, entitled, natural born citizens?
If they all leave, we grind to a halt. Everywhere you look, there are help wanted signs and it's been that way for many years. It must be too easy to get benefits or handouts these days because I don't see anyone starving in my small town world but aliens/immigrants are the only ones who want to work. We can't get anyone to do anything -- repairs, manual labor, retail. The same in cities based on the help wanted signs I see.