[Kadin]

> came to work jobs no one else would take

This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop.

So the fact that jobs that "no one else would take" exist and are being taken by illegal immigrants isn't a good thing. If you're in favor of expanded immigration, making that claim doesn't help your case. It substantiates the case that anti-immigration proponents have always made, which is that immigrants take the bottom out of the labor market and help keep salaries down.

After all, if nobody would take a job doing some particularly onerous job at a pittance per hour, then the employer would have to pay more, or automate, or find a more efficient way of doing the job. Refusing to do these jobs is the correct response when they are clearly undercompensated.

There are lots of people in the legal labor market who do terribly unpleasant, physically strenuous, or frankly dangerous jobs, but they typically (outside of illegal or exploitative markets) do them for reasonable wages. Someone who SCUBA dives in raw sewage or nuclear waste, for instance, is probably going to demand a fair compensation for the unpleasantness of the job. The same should be true with people who work in slaughterhouses or picking strawberries or tarring asphalt roofs. The narrative that "Americans just won't do" certain jobs is one that is created by cheapskate, exploitative employers who don't want to pay the market rate for particularly ugly jobs. Parroting it is water-carrying for these exploitative industries.

[hackuser]

>> came to work jobs no one else would take

> If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take

Typically, that statement also refers to jobs that are perfectly legal, but most Americans wouldn't take anyway. For example, many of the experienced people reading this wouldn't drive a cab, deliver pizzas, work as unskilled construction labor, a dishwasher or a janitor if they became unemployed. They'd continue to look for their next IT job. And they'd be choosy about that - not selling computers at Best Buy, for example.

(I'm not putting down those jobs; personally I respect any work.)

[dragonwriter]

I've done almost all of those things before (general maintenance rather than construction, and I've never driven a cab) -- including retail sales at an electronics chain (Radio Shack before Best Buy was the thing) -- and would again if I didn't have better prospects elsewhere (with my experience and expectations of the future labor market, I don't expect to need to do any of those things again, but that's a different thing than being unwilling to consider it if there was a need.)

I suspect that's not all that uncommon here (well, maybe not having done as many of the less-skilled jobs you talk about, but not being unwilling if it was genuinely the best prospect.)

[gravypod]

Someone I know from the UK used to quit his job if he got fed up and then become a package courier.

   "I'd say sod it and drive around the country side for a few months."

[icantdrive55]

I have a feeling you are more like the average person here.

When the economy goes into a recession, or our current line of work is down sized; we take a chit job.

Only the elite can wait around until something palatable opens up.

My problem with people so desperate for money, is they come here illegailly, or just happen to somehow get some bogus paperwork by the federal government, and will do practically any job.

A large swath of American employers know they can use these people, treat them poorly, and make a better ROI in their particuliar business venture.

Construction trades--love them. It's gotten so bad, if I took my general contractor's licence out of non-op status, I honest don't know if I could be competitive without hiring the people who will work for minimum wage, or less.

("How do these workers manage to live on the U.S., if you pay them so little? They have different cultural norms than the average American. They see nothing wrong with bunk beds, and four, or more to a residential bedroom. Maybe the average American should get used to living like this; that's another debate.)

So basically, my gripe is certain employers are thrilled they can get away with underpaying their employees. If they do it shroudly, they can live the American Dream--nice house, happy wife, a bunch of spoiled kids.

There are so many business that use this business model.

I have very wealthy neighbors in Marin County. Yes, that liberal enclave north of San Francisco. Literally every landscaper on this block doesn't speak English, nor do most of the plumbers, and handymen. The DINK's like to gab, and a lot of the talk is just how cheap they get their jobs done. My next store neighbor literally brings two low wage helpers to Home Depot in her Mercedes. Their job is to follow her around, in her high heals, and carry her stuff to the car. Then they spend the rest of the day at her disposal. (I'm glad they are doing this job.)

In the end, it makes chit jobs hard to find when Americans are layed off, or fired.

Before we had this huge sector of society that will literally do anything, for practically noting; chit jobs were better. That was in the 80's, and 90's. By the 2000's it was over. They were here, and spoiled the low wage job sector even further.

That's where the anger comes in. It has nothing to do about Trumps claims of "Rapists--and sometimes, good citizens", etc.

[dragonwriter]

> My problem with people so desperate for money, is they come here illegailly, or just happen to somehow get some bogus paperwork by the federal government, and will do practically any job.

Why have a problem with those people? To me, that makes about as much sense having a problem with the relative economic success of the United States, which is why the US has been (until the recent economic crisis) an attractive place for such people to seek to go.

Why not, instead, have a problem with the features of the system in the US that fail to address (or actively make worse) the social costs of such desperation, including, but not limited to:

(1) a legal immigration system with, in most immigrant visa categories, hard per-country numerical limits which are not aligned with demand, creating the incentive for illegal immigration (simply eliminating per country limits in most visa categories and assigning available slots from one global pool would vastly reduce illegal immigration; removing hard numerical limits and charging fees to mitigate the social costs of excess immigration beyond existing caps would reduce it even further and allow surplus immigration demand to be a source of public revenue rather than a cost hole.)

(2) poor enforcement of labor rules, both where it comes to enforcing who-can-legally-work requirements, but also wage, hour, tax, and benefit rules (without poor enforcement on both sides of this equation, the effect of illegal immigration on wages and working conditions would be far less, and the draw for illegal immigrants would be far less.)

[radarsat1]

> They have different cultural norms than the average American. They see nothing wrong with bunk beds, and four, or more to a residential bedroom.

So, just like silicon valley programmers then?

http://boingboing.net/2013/12/21/live-in-a-san-francisco-ike...

People will do what they need to, to improve their lives. I don't completely disagree with your post, but this comment was unnecessary and off base. You make it sound like they wouldn't be happier with more space and a nicer living quarters. They are human beings, of course they would be. Yet, they are willing to risk everything and put up with pretty desperate living conditions to come to the US. Maybe there is a reason.

[forthefuture]

It's just not true that Americans wouldn't take these jobs.

If Americans won't take jobs at $2 an hour that doesn't mean Americans are big assholes who leave food on the table, it means that companies are big assholes that want to profit seek at the cost of legal employment. If you actually noticed a shortage of employees in these jobs, their salaries would necessarily go up to attract more. This is the natural process of the labor market.

[mc32]

Most Americans (as well as non-Americans) would prefer other things, if they had them available. There are poor people out there. I knew a couple who'd sell their blood often (they'd cheat by going to different banks) in order to afford gas to get to a menial job. Another one working home depot, etc. getting minimum wage --I'm not taking about highschoolers working McDonald's or the mall, I mean grownups.

[knieveltech]

Check your assumptions, friend. Pizza delivery drivers in decent areas routinely make more a year than college professors and other more prestigious-but-ultimately-low-paying gigs.

[EGreg]

I disagree, on liberal and humanitarian grounds.

These people make the risky and grueling trip to the US and try to make it as an illegal immigrant, for a reason: they feel the alternative is worse. They'd rather be picking crops and remitting money to their family back home, doing the jobs Americans don't do. You should be blaming the drug war that caused the Sinaloa cartel and others to take over entire cities, and resort to violence we now know from ISIS.

It's a bit like blaming the Koch brothers for hiring convicts for jobs because the convicts would be happy with less. When properly you should be blaming all the other employers whose refusal to hire convicts leads to them CHOOSING to take these jobs.

In short, even though I am a liberal, I recognize that these arguments about "exploitation" are myopic. They don't look 1 step beyond the "exploiter" to see whatconditions make people CHOOSE to be "exploited". Always, the real fix is to fix the conditions at large, not the employer.

So it is with the jobs that "no one wants". I would rather Mexicans come and do them for less, and American citizens get freed up to study other subjects and get higher paying jobs.

In fact I'd advocate for taxing 20-30% of the money saved from hiring overseas workers and automating jobs away and redistributing it as basic income on the federal level. That would help transition our economy from the one we had 20 years ago to one where aggregate demand for human labor has droppd by 10x.

[redwood]

While I see what you're saying, it's disingenuous with respect to American history, to pretend the nation has ever not aggressively brought people in to work "who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool"

[imagist]

> This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop.

Agreed. There was a pretty good article on this in N+1 magazine a few months back that I found insightful enough to copy down:

> Both American and Mexican labor are cheaper for being divided, and there is no obvious reason to believe that more labor laws, like raising the minimum wage, will change the fact if there remains a surplus of undocumented workers to whom these laws technically apply, though in practice they are unenforced. The real wage, calculated as the average rate paid to documented and undocumented workers alike, explains Trump's rise more than his virulent racism does. Racism is a side effect of a regime that keeps labor laws on the books only to look the other way when millions of brown people are subjected to conditions far beneath these standards.

> The wall isn't racist; the border is racist. The wall is an effort to force a broader recognition of the privileges the border grants to professionals, who are the primary beneficiaries of American immigration and trade policy, and to redistribute some of its racist benefits downward. The only solution to this problem is to raise the price of labor power in Mexico, and then everywhere else. But given the limited political horizon of the professional left, for whom a higher minimum wage for American citizens is the best that can be hoped for, perhaps the unemployed people of Indiana can be forgiven for thinking that the wall is more realistic.

[brokenmachine]

Excellent post.