| 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. |
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.)