| > For example, if an immigrant is going to do X job, require that they be paid at least as much as what U.S. workers doing that job earn. We have strong evidence that price fixing doesn't work. You can't double or triple the supply and use a half baked law to keep the price high. I don't know why you think basic economics doesn't apply to labor. > But that's a problem of implementing the law--the law itself is fine That is naive. The truth is these kinds of laws are very expensive to enforce. Should each immigrant put up a $20k bond? > You are assuming that new roads cannot be constructed, new houses cannot be built, and most of all Stop creating strawman arguments. Adding and expanding infrastructure to a dense city is incredibly expensive. It cost my local government $100 million to widen a few hundred meter stretch of road. > and most of all (the biggest mistake people make) that there is only a fixed number of jobs in a country Again, stop creating strawman arguments. I am arguing that a lot of the working poor will be worse off under your economic free for all. You haven't provided a shred of evidence as to why that won't be the case. I don't believe there are a fixed number of jobs but I also understand how difficult it is to change fields even as a well educated reasonably wealthy individual. We have a huge amount of evidence that the working poor struggle to adapt to changing labor markets. The way you jump to claims of racism and xenophobia despite having put up a very weak argument is telling. |
> Should each immigrant put up a $20k bond?
Compliance with wage requirements is the duty of the employer, not the employee. According to your logic, we would punish U.S. workers who are not paid the $7.25 federal minimum wage by asking them to pay $20,000 instead of taking action against the employers who fail to comply with the minimum wage law. So your statement is illogical and invalid.
> Adding and expanding infrastructure to a dense city is incredibly expensive. It cost my local government $100 million to widen a few hundred meter stretch of road.
If your city overspent on roads, that's a result of corruption and/or government inefficiency -- a different and unrelated problem. The cost of increasing infrastructure is paid for by the taxpayers. Immigrants pay taxes, and thus increase tax revenue. If there is a gap in the additional cost and the additional tax revenue generated by immigrants, that is a result of government inefficiency and possibly corruption.
The solution to that problem is to fix government inefficiency, the solution is not to ban immigrants. So your argument here is also invalid.
> I am arguing that a lot of the working poor will be worse off under your economic free for all.
According to your theory, the working poor should have been decimated by the mass immigration from Europe that occurred during much of US history. It wasn't.
Immigration contributes to economic growth. The poorest and least-skilled US workers might be impacted, but that is not the issue at hand here. We're discussing the immigration of educated, skilled immigrants.
For evidence on how immigration contributes to economic growth, see this study: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/23550/the-economic-and-fiscal-co...
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To recap: you made a straw man argument about your city's extreme inefficiency at building roads. Then you mentioned something about putting up a bond, perhaps as a joke. That's why I brought up the possibility of xenophobia and/or racism, since these sort of comments make me wonder what the real motivations behind this is.
From a libertarian point of view, the problem I have with immigrant-hating people is that they're advocating for the use of violence (i.e. "immigration enforcement") against peaceful immigrants. Libertarians believe the use of violence against peaceful immigrants is wrong: https://www.lp.org/issues/immigration The Libertarians whom you dismissed as "ideologues" are people who are motivated by a strong sense of right and wrong. I know people who were brought here as young children, who've lived here their whole lives. Not that I think this makes them more deserving of being allowed to stay -- any and all peaceful persons should be allowed to stay. But anti-immigrant folk want to send men with guns into their homes, drag them out forcibly at gunpoint, throw them in a cage at some detention facility, and then ship them off to some random country. And for what? They were living peaceful and productive lives here. These anti-immigrant people want to use violence to destroy the lives of peaceful immigrants. I find this evil and immoral.