As she champions Illegal Immigrants, is AOC a threat to National Security?

[bruto]

I think there are some industries (New England fishing is often referred to as an example) which are in a more difficult position on wages and illegal workers than the obvious ones like billionaire hoteliers and rich people who hire illegals to mow the lawn and skim the pool. If some marginally profitable industries paid sufficient wages to attract legal workers, they would no longer be competitive and would likely not survive. Or at least that's what they claim, and there's at least a little bit of evidence on their side. This, of course, brings up a whole separate issue of whether an industry that cannot be competitive should not simply dwindle and die, but that brings up another separate issue of whether the peripheral economic consequences would be worse yet, and also, in this case, of whether the fairly well regulated US fishing industry should yield to the ecologically irresponsible fisheries of the rest of the world.

Some New England dairy farmers are in a similar position. The market, especially in places where huge agribusinesses rule the marketplace, does not support good wages for workers. Illegal immigrants will do the work for sustainable but substandard wages and living conditions. And again, countering the stark economics of free enterprise is a real question of whether the social and ecological downside of megafarms is a good tradeoff for traditional smaller farms, often family enterprises.

Then again, if we really believe in free enterprise, then perhaps we should say to hell with noncompetitive businesses like small farms and Atlantic fisheries. When the issue of whether plantations could survive without slaves came up, plenty of people said the social issue of slavery was more important, and I think they were right. It gets a little murkier when we're talking about underpaid, illegal workers who are not quite slaves, and employers who are not quite slavers, and crystal clarity is hard to come by here.

Although the issue for rich people and hotel owners who hire illegal maids and gardeners is pretty simple, it's not universally so.

 

[newyorkguy]

The whole "we can't find domestic workers to do the jobs" excuse from employers leaves out an important second part: "...at the wages we are willing to pay...

The trouble is this: In a given industry -- say chicken processors -- they decide on a policy where they're hiring only documented workers or American citizens, paying wages that are high enough to attract them. In order to work it has to be across-the-board so no individual company would have an unfair advantage by using undocumented workers at lower cost. How are you going to enforce that? If an individual company implements the policy, its costs go up, its profit margin down. If the profit margin wasn't pretty high to begin with, and they're competing against companies who still use lower paid undocumented workers, they can go out of business.

The only way to make this work industry-wide is through government intervention. Only the states and the federal government could make this happen. That enforcement has been so spotty convinced me long ago that despite what they tell the public there is no real desire to eliminate undocumented workers.

Trump is a perfect example. He has no problem ranting about illegal workers despite a forty year history of hiring them, confident that his supporters -- and talking heads like Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs -- won't call him on it.

 

[Baylor]

It kind of is, though. Here's an analysis that supports your view that there is no labor shortage. There's very little in this I disagree with. We have a shortage of Americans willing to work in certain industries for the wages those industries supply. The analysis provides a simple solution: raise those wages. I agree 100%. You pay someone $15/hour to cut up chickens or pick strawberries and there will be plenty of American citizens to fill those jobs.

There's no logic pretzel on my end. You might check, however, on the folks who are simultaneously 1) fighting against the notion of a national living minimum wage and 2) going out of their way to punish illegal immigrants instead of the employers luring them here.

I would argue there are folks who are simultaneously 1) fighting for a living wage for unskilled workers, and 2) going out of their way to advocate for and incentivize millions of more illegal, unskilled workers to immigrate to the US that will further drive down wages. But I'm not in to the whole "left/right" paradigm. It appears we're pretty much on the same page. I agree 100% there should be severe legal ramifications for hiring illegal aliens, along with the traffickers and microloan financiers that bring them here.

I appreciate the thoughtful commentary and having the confidence in your worldview to explain it thoroughly. Not something I'm used to around here.

Edited by Agatha: 

Please only discuss moderation concerns in the appropriate place - the forum management feedback forum. I have opened a thread for you there with the quote edited from this post.

 

[Baylor]

Yeah, as you point out, the USA has the highest infected numbers in the world (besides perhaps China and Russia since they are likely hiding their real numbers) so in truth Undocumented people are actually more likely risking themselves by entering the US, than the other way around.
.

So what? What does this have to do with anything? This doesn't even take into account per capita, or availability of testing. And that still wouldn't matter because your point is completely stupid and irrelevant.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

It kind of is, though. You pay someone $15/hour to cut up chickens or pick strawberries and there will be plenty of American citizens to fill those jobs.

Evidence?

"It's hard work," she says. "You have to be able to stand on your feet all day...

"The people that come in and apply to take our jobs will show up for one shift. They will not be clean. They will not probably be sober. They will ask for their money at the end of the shift and then they will not be back for the second shift."

The real reason businesses have to employ immigrants is that American 'workers' are fat and lazy. You could pay them $1000 an hour and they would still be drunk and not turn up for the second shift.

Even the not-so fat and lazy of us probably couldn't stomach doing that kind of job for only $15 per hour. So the wage would have to be higher and the working conditions more favorable, making the product too expensive for us to buy. So it's not just employers who need cheap immigrant labor, but American consumers as well. That's why we need to have higher paying jobs than them. This is simply how capitalism works, so if you're not a pinko communist socialist you shouldn't complain about it.

 

[Baylor]

Evidence?

 

[kookbreaker]

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesal...place-migrant-farmworkers-with-high-schoolers

 

[newyorkguy]

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesal...place-migrant-farmworkers-with-high-schoolers

"San Diego high school students await a bus ride to Blythe, Calif., to go pick cantaloupes in the summer of 1965. They were recruited as part of the A-TEAM, a government program to replace migrant farm workers with high school students." From the link:

"We went through something that you can't explain to anyone, unless you were out there in that friggin' heat," the 70-year-old says. "It could only be lived." But he says the experience also taught them empathy toward immigrant workers that Carter says the rest of the country should learn, especially during these times.

"There's nothing you can say to us that [migrant laborers] are rapists or they're lazy," he says. "We know the work they do. And they do it all their lives, not just one summer for a couple of months. And they raise their families on it. Anyone ever talks bad on them, I always think, 'Keep talking, buddy, because I know what the real deal is.' "