[luckystarr]

Its varied. I think there was no study that checks that for the whole of Germany, but in my town, most (>90%) of the Syrian refugees from a few years back are now settled down, have a job and and pay social security. A few have high paying jobs (construction, specialized metal-working, etc.), but many of them are in the medium to low income sector. Interestingly, they view food related jobs as high status jobs, whereas German people do not. So many of them are employed in restaurants, etc.

Update: there are of course also other arrivals, but the Syrians make the bulk of them.

[Garvi]

It's cheap labor for employers and bad news for German employees who felt the jobs weren't paid enough. The employees who wouldn't work for a "hungerlohn" are forced now as the emplyeers have absolutely no incentive to lower their profit margins, with all the Syrian refugees willing to work for less. I'm sure they're grateful and that they're doing better than in US occupied Syria (Isn't it great how much media coverage the Syrian invasion and civil displacement got?), but it's still an exploitative profit oriented system that's taking advantage of peoples situation.

Edit: Knowing HN, I'll be the one called racist as opposed to the comment right next to me that's saying terrible things about Muslims.

[mrtksn]

I downvoted you not because you said anything racist but because I strongly disagree with your argument about achieving high salaries through limiting the workforce availability.

The problem with this approach is that, the compensation becomes high for no good reason and since less people are working the output declines. Everything becomes more expensive because the consumption stays the same or higher but the production don't follow. Maybe you make more money by not letting a Syrian immigrant to cook food and compete with you but you also pay more to have your apartment painted because they didn't let some other Syrian immigrant compete in the painting business.

Immigrants that work create prosperity. If you are having trouble competing with a newcomers who barely speak the language, don't know anything of your culture and they grew up in a much poorer conditions in a country with much less opportunities, then it's on you. You should have taken advantage of living in this rich country that has given you all kind of opportunities, if you can't I don't see moral obligation to pay you well just because you are local.

People who want to participate in the society, create value and be compensated for it should not be stopped from doing it just because it might hurt someone else's prospect. This is basically the same argument against technology where some people would argue that we should limit robots and automation so that the workers can keep their jobs.

People are scared of change and don't want competition but if we artificially limit competition, the whole society will end up uncompetitive and catastrophe can happen. Protectionism is very dangerous, look what's happening to VW.

[expertentipp]

> if you are having trouble competing with a newcomers who barely speak the language, don't know anything of your culture and they grew up in a much poorer conditions in a country with much less opportunities, then it's on you.

I swear I encountered the same argument in Britain after EU enlargement in 2004, when they opened for all citizens of new countries. Cunningly DACH countries fiercely negotiated at that time the longest possible transition periods.

[mrtksn]

And UK left EU, no new people can come and wages are going up. Are the living standards going up too? Nope.

If you want to see a higher number in the bank account and pay higher numbers for everything, be my guest but that's not going to solve your problems. Inflation is not a saviour.

[FirmwareBurner]

>If you are having trouble competing with a newcomers who barely speak the language, don't know anything of your culture and they grew up in a much poorer conditions in a country with much less opportunities, then it's on you.

It's funny to blame others for being wage dumped on as being their own fault, as long as it's not your job that's threatened form wage dumping.

[haspok]

So whose fault would it be? Let me rephrase the question: who is picking strawberries from the fields in the UK now?

I recommend everyone to watch the series called "Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole" (mostly available on YT). I don't even blame these people, they are just doing what the system lets them get away with.

[FirmwareBurner]

That's just pointless whataboutism. Workers being wage dumped on by cheaper more desperate workforce that puts downward pressure on the labor market reducing their power to negociate higher wages, and people choosing to live on the dole because they're fuckups at life, are two different orthogonal issues that are unrelated.

Imagine you graduate form university and apply for jobs where your employer receives 1 resume for every position open. What happens with your bargaining power when your employer can now hire from anywhere in the world without any visa barriers and now receives 200 resumes for the same position?

[haspok]

> reducing their power to negociate higher wages

"Negociate"?

> Workers being wage dumped on by cheaper more desperate workforce...

"Wage dump" - that word again. So this is how people pick up policital slogans and start repeating them, without even thinking about how much of it is true. I don't think it is true.

> people choosing to live on the dole because they're fuckups at life

Think about who is paying for their benefits.

> What happens with your bargaining power when your employer can now hire from anywhere in the world without any visa barriers

Right, because that's what's going on in the UK. I don't think anyone suggested anything even remotely like that. In fact, I don't know of any country that does that.

[mrtksn]

>wage dumping

That's made up word. It's actually competition and everyone has right to compete. If you don't want wages go below some level simply set the minimum wage to that level.

What's next? Are we going to start issuing licenses for using JavaScript because the tech sector slowed and it's easy to learn a JS framework to compete for the available jobs?

[FirmwareBurner]

>That's made up word.

Are you literate?

> It's actually competition and everyone has right to compete.

Ah yes, the "free market" argument again.

You see, when you can't afford a house anymore because the central bank and government fucked you over and your wages are stagnating thanks to unfair competition from migrant workers, then there's nothing we can do about it it's just the "free market supply and demand".

But when workers' wages start getting too high for employers' linking as he can only get a platinum trim yacht instead of the diamond one, then it's no longer the hand of the free market working in the workers' favor but it's now called a "labor shortage" so all unions must be defanged and immigration barriers must be removed to ease the so called "labor shortage".

Now that's propaganda.

[Garvi]

> the compensation becomes high for no good reason

Not for no good reason - supply and demand. Literally the most important corner stone of any capitalistic system. The rest of your paragraph is based on your forced assumption of "no reason".

> Maybe you make more money by not letting a Syrian immigrant to cook food and compete with you but you also pay more to have your apartment painted because they didn't let some other Syrian immigrant compete in the painting business.

I'd say you're undervaluing apartment painting. Which is obvious since you're advocating having to fly in people from a destroyed country to do it.

In other words: Low paying jobs wouldn't sit around for long going undone. The market would adjust. Either they're jobs that shouldn't exist in the first place and need to vanish, or they are underpaid and the market would adjust by paying them better.

Try envisioning a world where a person who does a hard shitty job gets paid the same as a highly trained person sitting in front of a PC all day. Cleaning toilets is essential for our society to function and should be a respectable profession. It might not take a lot of education, but it's a hard job none the less The only reason hard jobs like this are not paid what they're worth, is trickery like immigration.

[mrtksn]

The number might become higher but if the economic output stays the same relative to the population the compensation doesn't become higher.

What would increase the output of the society? Employed people or unemployed people? It's employed people, so as long as the newcomers are employed and produce more than they consume everyone will be better off.

Forget the numbers, those are just for bookkeeping. You are not going to be better off if you you are compensated better due to staff shortages and then pay more due to staff shortages.

[Garvi]

> The number might become higher but if the economic output stays the same relative to the population the compensation doesn't become higher.

You're using the word compensation ambiguously. Your sentence is thus nonsense as I cannot parse what you meant. Was that your point?

> You are not going to be better off if you you are compensated better due to staff shortages and then pay more due to staff shortages.

Are you saying that keeping payment low is good for people because it also keeps inflation low? I'm sure everyone will agree and take a pay cut any moment now :)

[mrangle]

"High" is a relative measure.

"Output" is vague and not an agreed upon ultimate goal. Slave colonies have lots of "output".

"Everything becomes more expensive" is vague and unsupported enough to be noise.

"Immigrants create prosperity" is dime store propaganda and noise. It isn't necessarily true nor false. Your presentation of it is negatively persuasive, howerever.

Your statement about "people who want to participate should have the right even if it hurts others" is simply a zero borders argument to permanently bottom out most wages. It isn't a pro technology argument. Couching its opposition as an anti-tech argument is bizarre mental gymnastics that isn't cogent.

"People are scared of change" is a generalized a bullying tactic meant to insult people in case none of your other arguments hit the mark.

Your argument that labor "competition" can't be limited by borders, lest society becomes uncompetitive and catastrophic, isn't born out by the evidence in any productive nation to include Germany. It's also a statement that is embarassed by your thesaurus abuse of alarmist adjectives. Which in turn belie any confidence that your arguments are persuasive.

[mrtksn]

I think, If you are looking for meaning you should stop picking words individually, claiming stuff about those words and analyse the whole text instead.

[orwin]

I won't call you racist (although your sibling earned a flag), but you have to understand that _right now_ you're wrong. Maybe in 3 years there will be a huge economic downturn, but if Germany missed a year of immigration, they would have had a lot of worker shortage this year. Which is imho crazy, because their energy usage grew way less than their GDP last year, which is like, impossible for any country but Germany and Japan.

[Garvi]

You missed elaborating on why you believe me to be wrong.

> because their energy usage grew way less than their GDP last year

Their main energy pipeline got blown up by an unknown assailant last year. They sanctioned Russia and thus stopped importing their energy and switched to US liquified gas for industrial use that's being shipped by ships and thus 2x more expensive. The US slapped another 2x on the price, just because they could.

[orwin]

> if Germany missed a year of immigration, they would have had a lot of worker shortage this year

Personnal service and agriculture in particular.

[luckystarr]

Even if Germany wouldn't have a minimum wage it wouldn't change the fact that German people won't work for the conditions you outlined. So for Germans this won't change anything anyways. Either the companies lower profits, raise prices or go bust. This way, the companies you're referring to got a few more years until the Syrians become more savvy.

[Garvi]

You completely missed my point.

[paiute]

George borjas is an academic that studies this if people are curious. I think the world will come to see economic migration as a sin in the future. It’s a great idea for a generation or two, but then how long?

[aaomidi]

Your complaint isn’t racist, it’s critical of the forces of capitalism.

That’s expected and instead you’ll probably get a lecture on how great capitalism is.