[mozumder]

The US already as plenty of people that "culturally fit better", are more educated, are skilled, etc.

We don't have enough people that picks Strawberry crops in California or does home construction in suburbs. We literally don't have those people willing to do those jobs, which can cause runaway inflation.

Immigration is not about adding more of the same. It's about filling holes in our economy and labor force.

How many Canadians do you think are going to go picking Strawberries in California?

[uxp100]

I'm not sure why strawberry pickers are always the example. Is there really a shortage? When I was a teenager, in the country, that was a common minimum wage job mostly done by 14 year olds. It really does suck, almost any job would be better, but I didn't think better jobs were more available now than the late 90s. If anything I would have expected more people to be in the job pool for picking now.

Reading you other replies, I'm not sure if I understand the perspective you're coming from, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I'm curious. Do you consider yourself anti-union?

[mozumder]

There really is a shortage of willing workers. There's all sorts of stories of companies in various industries not being able to find people willing to do actual hard work. And why should they? The public doesn't spend thousands of dollars to educate Americans to learn Calculus, ancient history, & Russian literature, only to end up picking strawberries like they're oxen? We'll have to figure out something else for this new class of citizens.

The perspective I'm coming from is "it's complicated". An example is about the Wal Mart here in the DC area, which tried to ban them a few years ago. You'd figure an wealthy liberal city like DC would forever ban them in favor of some fancy locally grown organic co-op farmers market or some crap like that. When the city council meetings came up to approve/disapprove them, the people that came up speak requesting approval were all the poor and the elderly, that relied on their low prices to make ends meet. Wal Mart in DC was approved.

And I would consider myself strong-union. At the very least every incorporated company that has any employee should have an employee representative on their board-of-directors.

[67726e]

> We don't have enough people that picks Strawberry crops in California or does home construction in suburbs. We literally don't have those people willing to do those jobs, which can cause runaway inflation

Then increase the wage paid. You're literally arguing for a slave-wage underclass.

[mozumder]

Are you under the mistaken impression that increasing wages paid would cause people to work those jobs?

And you are literally asking for runaway inflation. Guess who pays for that the most at a rate higher than the rest of society? The poor and the elderly on fixed income.

Do you want to punish the poor and elderly on fixed income because millennials can't be bothered to work hard labor because it might interrupt their precious time?

Maybe you would like to take away the healthcare for the poor and elderly as well?

[xienze]

> Are you under the mistaken impression that increasing wages paid would cause people to work those jobs?

Has anyone actually tried paying $25 per hour plus benefits for strawberry picking?

Let me guess, you're entirely consistent in your beliefs and likewise oppose the $15/hour minimum wage for fast food workers. Because after all, that would lead to runaway inflation.

[mozumder]

> Has anyone actually tried paying $25 per hour plus benefits for strawberry picking?

Yes. Actually here's one article about farmers offering $25/hr picking strawberries:

http://komonews.com/news/local/local-berry-farmers-lament-la...

Their crops are getting ruined because they can't get workers.

I can't believe people don't understand how comfortable the average millennial is in this life, and how completely unnecessary it is for them to work hard labor.

And there's no faking it in economics. If you artificially raise prices for unskilled labor, you're going to raise inflation, and now you're back to square one in needing to raise wages again.

We need to have wages tied with age and skill level/profession. A blanket minimum wage is just a dumb idea. Teenagers don't need $15/hour, as they should be at school. The head of a family household does.

[xienze]

> Yes. Actually here's one article about farmers offering $25/hr picking strawberries:

Sounds like Mexicans weren't willing to do it either. What changed from year to year? Clearly there's something else at play if they couldn't even get Mexicans to do it. The article doesn't mention that the farmer is exclusively hiring legal citizens, Washington State is ranked 15th for Hispanic population, and the farm is near a major metro area, so I don't buy the argument that there aren't enough Mexicans available either. It's clearly something else.

> Teenagers don't need $15/hour, as they should be at school. The head of a family household does.

Great, now you've just created an incentive to not hire anyone older than some particular age in a low-skill industry.

[stale2002]

Then pay them 50$ an hour.

I know tons of people who'd take that job.

Raise it to 100$ an hour and I'll volunteer to do it myself.

If prices go up, then prices go up. Supply and demand.

[oblio]

Let's use logic here. What happens to the price of strawberries if the price of labor goes up 5-10x?

Which people are most affected by the change in price?

[wahern]

Not possible. Without cheap labor that kind of work would either move off shore to where labor is cheaper, or it'd be automated.

My father lives in rural Alabama and is a proud red neck. But he's a transplant and a little less provincial than many native Alabamians. I visited him a few years ago and noted how many Mexicans and Central Americans had moved into the area, starting from basically none 20 years ago.

Most of southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle is timber land, much of it owned by paper companies. As he explained it to me, at some point the locals became averse to planting new trees. It's back-breaking manual labor. Immigrants filled in the gaps until at some [inflection] point the work all of sudden became "Mexican work", which pretty much guaranteed no white or black native would ever work it again no matter the wage. In a very short timeframe you saw a large influx of Mexicans and Central Americans as the baton was passed from poor whites to poor immigrants. It was to my mind something of an oddity in the rural Deep South, at least since the last influx of Scottish and Irish a hundred-plus years ago.

If the immigrants weren't available, I have no doubt that the paper companies would have turned to automation. The machines they operate to harvest trees are marvels. A machine for planting saplings probably isn't that difficult; indeed, it probably already exists. Doubtless the days of manual sapling planting are already numbered. Nonetheless, the influx of immigrants was a small economic boon that the locals would have appreciated were it not for the typical racist and nativist sentiments almost universally held.

As my father put it, it's absolutely ridiculous that they look down on hard-working immigrants doing the work that they recently once performed but now feel themselves too good to do. To be clear, the unemployment rate in that area is much higher than the national rate, and always has been. But irony of ironies, the social safety net (such as it is in Alabama) provides just enough comfort that poor whites can get by without having to do such work. Mind you, "get by" is still incredibly impoverished, but in that neck of the woods expectations are much lower than most of the rest of the country.

Anyhow, I don't mean to argue with the notion that immigration has historically been used to suppress wages, and that it can contribute to greater income inequality. On the whole I agree with that--it historically has, even though I don't think it's a necessary outcome of immigration. But higher wages isn't always an answer. There are structural and cultural reasons that act as a barrier to natives (especially white natives) performing certain tasks, particularly in historically poor areas where both structural and cultural influences are exaggerated.

That said, maybe automation in this case would have been better than supplementing the unskilled labor pool. Maybe the wages paid to a few skilled machine operators would have been better for the community than the low wages paid to a large number of new manual laborers. It's all a very complex subject. What is certain is that there was no third alternative; higher wages for the manual labor was never gonna happen.

[67726e]

Either pay a higher wage and start paying a higher price, automate it, or do without it. Arguing in favor of exploitative labor practices because you just have to have strawberries or your lawn mowed is a horrible argument. We should not be importing impoverished people and keeping them impoverished for your own personal convenience and desire.

[wahern]

If planting saplings in rural Alabama wasn't a better life from whence they came, then presumably they wouldn't have come. There are some hidden assumptions there, but I think those are pretty safe assumptions given the actuality of their movement.

Also, all labor is "exploitation". Does your company pass through 100% of the value you add to the organization? I seriously doubt it.

Meaningful exploitation would be, say, Alabama benefitting from Mexican immigrant labor while simultaneously discouraging or preventing their children from going to public school.

Now, sending immigrants back home might put an end to that kind of exploitation. But it's disingenuous to say that it's a favor to them to do so. It also ignores the fact one could also end the exploitation by, you know, ending the unfair treatment.

[mozumder]

Classism exists, and will always exists.

Not everyone deserves to be treated equally. If you are the same as everyone else, what use are you? You become unnecessary. That is the fundamental rationale of life - we are not all the same chunk of organic matter.

Ensuring disparity is a good thing. Your life won't change because a rich person exists.

Also, anything can be considered "exploitative".

We should be importing impoverished foreigners in order to give them a better life here in the US, because that's what they want.

If you can't compete against these impoverished foreigners, then that's your fault, not theirs.

[67726e]

> Not everyone deserves to be treated equally.

Ok.

[canadian_voter]

> How many Canadians do you think are going to go picking Strawberries in California?

Standing here, looking out the window at the cold snow blowing, I can say that I would very much prefer to be picking strawberries in California at the moment.