“Americans won’t do those jobs” is the worst argument for mass immigration ever

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The argument is not and should not be that "Americans won't do these jobs" but that we have inadequate citizen applicants to get the job done when the job is important and needed from generating food to nursing care.

From inception, the U.S. was built on free and then underpaid labor. Indentured servants > slaves > sharecroppers/Jim Crow blacks > Irish/Italian/Polish/Chinese immigrants > illegal immigrants from Latin America. Our food and several manufacturing sectors have ALWAYS paid below market-rate wages.

OP here. Yes, I read The Jungle. I thought we were supposed to be progressing past that. A lot of people on this thread are fine with those jobs continuing to suck as long as it’s not them who has to do them.

My point wasn't to make a value judgment about who should be doing the work, it was to point out that America has quite literally never operated without an exploited underclass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If those jobs are so hard and low paying, why would you want to import millions more low skilled workers to further dilute wages and put downward pressure on working conditions?

Why do you accept at face value that it is the nature of things to pay people pennies to pick strawberries for hours under the hot sun?

Why do you feel so entitled to cheap restaurant food, landscaping services, childcare, pedicures, and thousands of other things that currently depend upon the availability of cheap labor?

So many people on DCUM claim we MUST have these people here because our economy depends on it. Yeah, well that same economy was working much better for the mostly white leisure class uC and UMC people than it was for anyone trying to climb the ladder from the bottom, and a big reason for that is downward pressure on labor wages.

TLDR why do you want to protect such an exploitative system, when what we really need to do is create upward pressure on wages and job conditions and that won’t happen with mass immigration whether it is legal or not.

I just can’t believe people are still trotting out the “Americans won’t do it” line when arguing against immigration enforcement. Let Americans decide if they’d rather pay $15 for strawberries or go work on the farm themselves.

Then I guess we won’t grow strawberries anymore in the US. It’s fine. We don’t need access to every fruit imaginable at all times.

We do. That’s what makes us a first world country.

[Anonymous]

Another way to go about it is to get rid of some of the uppercrust. Let's make it so the capital can go to the labor.

Better to have fewer chiefs than not enough Indians. I'm pretty sure we could get rid of most of the urban core with no appreciable loss in quality of life.

[Anonymous]

Let’s try cutting welfare completely and we will see those jobs filled real quick. Work or starve.

[Anonymous]

Let’s be real, cheap labor has always played a big role in how countries industrialize. Capitalism kind of runs on it. All the major economies we know today got to where they are by relying on low-cost labor, and honestly, they still do.

If you want to survive in a competitive capitalist system, you need access to cheap labor. If it’s not available at home, businesses usually turn to outsourcing and find it elsewhere.

That’s just how the global economy works. It’s not exactly fair, and yeah, it can be pretty messed up. But it’s the reality we live in.
Capitalism tends to go hand-in-hand with inequality and some level of labor exploitation. It’s not ideal, but it’s part of the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We created this problem ourselves.

You can't push every graduating HS senior to go to college and then get offended in 4 years when they graduate college and refuse manual labor jobs because they feel overqualified for those jobs.

Maybe we shouldn't have vilified service industry jobs for the last 20+ years and looked down on those holding them as uneducated and lesser than.

It’s the pay. No one cares what some officer dweller thinks of them. The underpaid jobs are picking produce, working on farms, warehouses, unskilled laborer.

Students graduating high school will be better off learning a trade unless they are in college for a specific career. Some trades like teachers, lawyers, nurses need college plus. But other trades that typically work with a profession , an engineer tech, a hospital tech can be certified in two years.

Don’t blame people for trying to encourage kids to push as much as they are capable of doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let’s be real, cheap labor has always played a big role in how countries industrialize. Capitalism kind of runs on it. All the major economies we know today got to where they are by relying on low-cost labor, and honestly, they still do.

If you want to survive in a competitive capitalist system, you need access to cheap labor. If it’s not available at home, businesses usually turn to outsourcing and find it elsewhere.

That’s just how the global economy works. It’s not exactly fair, and yeah, it can be pretty messed up. But it’s the reality we live in.
Capitalism tends to go hand-in-hand with inequality and some level of labor exploitation. It’s not ideal, but it’s part of the system.

So, you're saying if we implement tariffs, globalist capitalism will go away and take their money with them, and we'll be left with a fairer more equitable economic system?

Long live Trump and his tariffs! Lets' do it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We created this problem ourselves.

You can't push every graduating HS senior to go to college and then get offended in 4 years when they graduate college and refuse manual labor jobs because they feel overqualified for those jobs.

Maybe we shouldn't have vilified service industry jobs for the last 20+ years and looked down on those holding them as uneducated and lesser than.

College-for-all was promoted all the way back to the GI Bill, and it was then and still is a fact that jobs for college-educated people typically pay more than blue collar jobs. Sure, there are rich plumbers who make more than many college-educated people and so on, but they are in the minority - they are typically folks who own the business and have several crews, as opposed to the guy on the plumbing crew.

But from there you took a hard right into the ditch to say blue collar jobs are "vilified" while also ignoring how in the last 20 years, the college educated workforce has been completely vilified by rural America, mostly because of grossly distorted rhetoric from folks like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage, playing through radios in trucks or on shop floors all across rural America. From them you have all of your deranged lore about millions of "useless degrees in womens studies and underwater basketweaving," and how if you go to college you will be indoctrinated into becoming a communist and so on.

The only person I ever heard denigrate blue collar work was my mom when I was growing up, who kept saying I'd end up a ditch digger if I didn't do my homework. She's a dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter by the way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let’s try cutting welfare completely and we will see those jobs filled real quick. Work or starve.

Guess folks are going to have to leave West Virginia then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The argument is not and should not be that "Americans won't do these jobs" but that we have inadequate citizen applicants to get the job done when the job is important and needed from generating food to nursing care.

From inception, the U.S. was built on free and then underpaid labor. Indentured servants > slaves > sharecroppers/Jim Crow blacks > Irish/Italian/Polish/Chinese immigrants > illegal immigrants from Latin America. Our food and several manufacturing sectors have ALWAYS paid below market-rate wages.

OP here. Yes, I read The Jungle. I thought we were supposed to be progressing past that. A lot of people on this thread are fine with those jobs continuing to suck as long as it’s not them who has to do them.

One side supports OSHA and safe working conditions, healthcare, education and a minimum wage. The other side is the GOP. Not the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let’s try cutting welfare completely and we will see those jobs filled real quick. Work or starve.

Um, you forgot the obvious choice/reality:

Crime.

When faced with a money problem, they turn to crime.

Do a little research on American history and then google what life looks like in countries with severe economic inequality (hint: it’s not good; lots of crime with the affluent living behind gates with armed security).

It gets complicated in the US since we have easy access to guns. (ICYMI: the less affluent have more guns than the more affluent. See how this gets tricky?)

Plus, we have gangs. Some are very well organized cartels. (This is the part of the immigration debate that the R’s were correct about…and wise to capitalize on.)

In short: it’s a lot more complicated than the comments on this thread.

PS - Housekeepers (and other hotel workers) in union cities earn more than you would ever imagine. They are very valuable jobs that people rarely walk away from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another way to go about it is to get rid of some of the uppercrust. Let's make it so the capital can go to the labor.

Better to have fewer chiefs than not enough Indians. I'm pretty sure we could get rid of most of the urban core with no appreciable loss in quality of life.

The urban core is where 90% of our GDP is located. without that, we are just Nebraska. Nothing wrong with that, but not a lot of innovation or growth there (ask me how I know)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We created this problem ourselves.

You can't push every graduating HS senior to go to college and then get offended in 4 years when they graduate college and refuse manual labor jobs because they feel overqualified for those jobs.

Maybe we shouldn't have vilified service industry jobs for the last 20+ years and looked down on those holding them as uneducated and lesser than.

It’s the pay. No one cares what some officer dweller thinks of them. The underpaid jobs are picking produce, working on farms, warehouses, unskilled laborer.

Students graduating high school will be better off learning a trade unless they are in college for a specific career. Some trades like teachers, lawyers, nurses need college plus. But other trades that typically work with a profession , an engineer tech, a hospital tech can be certified in two years.

Don’t blame people for trying to encourage kids to push as much as they are capable of doing.

The bolded is actually one of th4 downfalls of higher education over the last 20 years. Yes, if one can pick up a skill like accounting, nursing or coding while in college that is great but the beauty of college is the exposure to a broad array of disciplines and using different parts of the brain to think. "pre-professionalism" has been eroding that significantly to the detriment of our country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The argument is not and should not be that "Americans won't do these jobs" but that we have inadequate citizen applicants to get the job done when the job is important and needed from generating food to nursing care.

From inception, the U.S. was built on free and then underpaid labor. Indentured servants > slaves > sharecroppers/Jim Crow blacks > Irish/Italian/Polish/Chinese immigrants > illegal immigrants from Latin America. Our food and several manufacturing sectors have ALWAYS paid below market-rate wages.

OP here. Yes, I read The Jungle. I thought we were supposed to be progressing past that. A lot of people on this thread are fine with those jobs continuing to suck as long as it’s not them who has to do them.

One side supports OSHA and safe working conditions, healthcare, education and a minimum wage. The other side is the GOP. Not the same.

To a point.

Dems support all those things in theory, but they don’t want to pay for them.

FTR, I’m a Dem.

Just look at how we’ve abandoned mom and pop shops to support Amazon, Walmart, and target. It’s because people prefer to pay less.

Ditto for using uber instead of (uninionized) taxis. Uber is cheaper.

And what about Airbnb? Hilton actually offers their workers good wages and benefits that mirror what is required in socialized countries in the EU, let many people opt for the cheaper Airbnbs despite the fact they are destroying the housing market…particularly for los wage workers and the elderly.

Most people only “care” in theory. Once it hits their own wallet, they sing a different tune.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The argument is not and should not be that "Americans won't do these jobs" but that we have inadequate citizen applicants to get the job done when the job is important and needed from generating food to nursing care.

From inception, the U.S. was built on free and then underpaid labor. Indentured servants > slaves > sharecroppers/Jim Crow blacks > Irish/Italian/Polish/Chinese immigrants > illegal immigrants from Latin America. Our food and several manufacturing sectors have ALWAYS paid below market-rate wages.

OP here. Yes, I read The Jungle. I thought we were supposed to be progressing past that. A lot of people on this thread are fine with those jobs continuing to suck as long as it’s not them who has to do them.

One side supports OSHA and safe working conditions, healthcare, education and a minimum wage. The other side is the GOP. Not the same.

To a point.

Dems support all those things in theory, but they don’t want to pay for them.

FTR, I’m a Dem.

Just look at how we’ve abandoned mom and pop shops to support Amazon, Walmart, and target. It’s because people prefer to pay less.

Ditto for using uber instead of (uninionized) taxis. Uber is cheaper.

And what about Airbnb? Hilton actually offers their workers good wages and benefits that mirror what is required in socialized countries in the EU, let many people opt for the cheaper Airbnbs despite the fact they are destroying the housing market…particularly for los wage workers and the elderly.

Most people only “care” in theory. Once it hits their own wallet, they sing a different tune.

What do you mean "the dems don't want to pay for them"?????????

We had OSHA and these other things and were paying for them. It is the GOP who is dismantling everything.
And Amazon, Walmart, Target, Uber etc are all owned by tech billionaires who are MAGAs.
Dems support things like Main Streets which the national organization is propped up by Historic Preservation organizations. That is where support for Mom and Pop shops is coming from and they are anything but right wingers.