Immigration thread (2 Viewers)

In keeping with the site's desire to have more conversation based on concepts, ideas and principles, I will be posting a couple of threads in hopes of generating discussion on topics that are relevant no matter who is in office or the news cycle at any point in time.

What are your guiding principles related to immigration? What in your opinion would be the most reasonable plan to reduce illegal immigration? Should legal immigration be limited to those who can assume roles in US society that are in short supply? What steps are necessary for elected representatives to be able to find compromise on these issues?

Number one thing the United States can do to thwart illegal immigration is hold businesses accountable that hire undocumented workers. Not just fines, but real jail time for violating laws that are already on the books.

Unless an immigrant is an epidemiologist or maybe a pulmonologist, I don't see how they can help us right now.

Beach Friends said:

Unless an immigrant is an epidemiologist or maybe a pulmonologist, I don't see how they can help us right now.

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I agree that currently we do not need any kind of immigration as I am sure other countries don't want people from the United States going there.

I would start with setting some foundation to discuss from.

For instance, it is probably good to establish what the illegal immigration population and trend actually is? What the effect of immigration has been on the country from a number of different metrics. Since not knowing that makes it difficult to measure or evaluate what sort of additional prescriptions, if any, are actually needed. Touching on the common assumptions or framings that tend to get baked into these discussions:


Illegal Immigrant Population







Incarceration rates and Criminality









Economic Impact










Taxes and Benefits












Labor Force





Sources:









To summarize, the illegal population is a population that has been in decline for over a decade. And that popular assertions about that population (along with the population of legal immigrants) in terms of their economic, criminal, and social impact are largely incorrect. In fact, the data and research tends to show the opposite, that they provide a host of net benefits from tax revenue to growth potential. Immigration is also currently the only mechanism we have to prevent a negative growth rate in the work force. So any prescriptions should be made in the context of these facts(unless you can reasonably and credibly dispute them) and I think people should be ready to have solutions to the problems presented in these findings if you are advocating to go forth with prescribing large reductions in the immigrant workforce.

In terms of policy prescriptions. I will try and put somethign together to explain out the reasoning based on the foundation of facts established here. Broadly speaking it emphasizes a focus on a current path to citizenship, less focus on the undocumented immigrants as opposed to the business owners incentivizing this and a system that is so poorly designed and inhumanely managed that it all but forces non-compliance. And that until we can solve the Gordian Knot of declining population and an economic system reliant upon growth and expansion, immigration in a large capacity is necessary and necessary not just in the skilled but the unskilled labor markets.

Man lots of good stuff here already.

Mostly I would just like to see the use of the visa programs like h2b and so on to not be used to keep wages down for the industry they are applied to.

Like for instance the h2b labor used for the major landscape industry and others is a sham to keep paying exceptionally low wages for exceptionally hard work.

I whole heatedly agree we are in need of immigrants and the labor they provide just not use it as a method to stagnate wages even further. We are not reproducing at the rates we once did.

Remove the "illegal" aspect. Give anyone that wants a path to citizenship a means to do so, within a respectable probation period. Like 2-4 years. I don't see the reasoning behind wanting to prevent a person from finding a better job/life. If they want to be here, let them, let them work, earn money, spend money, pay taxes etc. Keeping them corralled into cages b/c immigration courts have backlogs for years isn't the answer. How about actually giving these people a chance? I feel like a lot of the "illegal" shirt comes from bias, racism and xenophobia and it only got worse with "rapists" enabler comments that trump has made.

The moose said:

Like for instance the h2b labor used for the major landscape industry and others is a sham to keep paying exceptionally low wages for exceptionally hard work.

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A lot of times employers can't find people who'll do the job here.

SystemShock said:

A lot of times employers can't find people who'll do the job here.

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Not really yes you advertise said job for so long without filling you are granted the visa workers you need.

The real issue is that the jobs are grossly underpaid. But your visa employees you now get to be their landlords because you supply travel and housing. You get to take back a huge amount of their pay putting four in a two bedroom or more now turning real profit with the rent if you buy the rental property and their labor but that amount of pay wouldn't pay for an American to rent a one bed room dump.

It is all a horrible circle. Used to stagnate wages and not pay living wages to Americans in America.


I am sure others might not see it the way I do it is all a scam.

The moose said:

Not really yes you advertise said job for so long without filling you are granted the visa workers you need.

The real issue is that the jobs are grossly underpaid. But your visa employees you now get to be their landlords because you supply travel and housing. You get to take back a huge amount of their pay putting four in a two bedroom or more now turning real profit with the rent if you buy the rental property and their labor but that amount of pay wouldn't pay for an American to rent a one bed room dump.

It is all a horrible circle. Used to stagnate wages and not pay living wages to Americans in America.


I am sure others might not see it the way I do it is all a scam.

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almost seems like a form of sharecropping

zztop said:

almost seems like a form of sharecropping

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Yeah it is pretty bad.

The president's golf courses hired 80 of them last season for Mar-a-Lago. It is not like he can't pay a living wage to employees while he gets 200k per member a year not counting other things they pay for.

It is a scam for most that use them.

My God if you have to pay a bit more per round of golf so Americans can afford to live you should.

The moose said:

Not really yes you advertise said job for so long without filling you are granted the visa workers you need.

The real issue is that the jobs are grossly underpaid. But your visa employees you now get to be their landlords because you supply travel and housing. You get to take back a huge amount of their pay putting four in a two bedroom or more now turning real profit with the rent if you buy the rental property and their labor but that amount of pay wouldn't pay for an American to rent a one bed room dump.

It is all a horrible circle. Used to stagnate wages and not pay living wages to Americans in America.


I am sure others might not see it the way I do it is all a scam.

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This sounds like you watched a vice.com video on youtube. I am sure they are situations like that, and I am not saying employers aren't profiting, but that's not the only way things work. There are many instances people here just don't want to do the work here in the U.S. even if companies upwards of $20/hr.

SystemShock said:

This sounds like you watched a vice.com video on youtube. I am sure they are situations like that, and I am not saying employers aren't profiting, but that's not the only way things work. There are many instances people here just don't want to do the work here in the U.S. even if companies upwards of $20/hr.

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I know there are studies that back you up on this(because we looked at this issue in one of my old labor economics classes decades ago and the evidence is pretty difficult to refute, and it has only strengthened from what I have seen).

But I think both arguments are true here. There are certainly jobs that most Americans don’t want to take even if you doubled wages, it’s also true that the illegal and some of the legal pipeline keeps wages artificially depressed. As you would typically expect if most of your labor market won’t accept a job at 15-20 an hour, it takes quite the mechanism to get people to suddenly accept the job for sometimes half that wage. And the way you do that is rely upon illegal labor or programs that really put laborers into a very leveraged position.

SystemShock said:

This sounds like you watched a vice.com video on youtube. I am sure they are situations like that, and I am not saying employers aren't profiting, but that's not the only way things work. There are many instances people here just don't want to do the work here in the U.S. even if companies upwards of $20/hr.

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Not vice.

Was in the industry for a while.

You can't compete with that at all when realistically they pay them what Americans can't make and take about half of it back in rent and over crowd them in an apartment like an American won't live.

Then try and win a bid against that you can't do it.

And yes the median american yearly salary is 31k so yes 20 an hour full time is 40k gross so yes people would do that job for that money they just can't afford to do it for less than half that money.

The moose said:

Not vice.

Was in the industry for a while.

You can't compete with that at all when realistically they pay them what Americans can't make and take about half of it back in rent and over crowd them in an apartment like an American won't live.

Then try and win a bid against that you can't do it.

And yes the median american yearly salary is 31k so yes 20 an hour full time is 40k gross so yes people would do that job for that money they just can't afford to do it for less than half that money.

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Well, those who are unemployed who want $20/hr, move to California. See how long they last picking up grapes and strawberries.

SystemShock said:

Well, those who are unemployed who want $20/hr, move to California. See how long they last picking up grapes and strawberries.

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Well California is a whole different world in cost of living and that is actually h1b labor visa and yes that is seasonal work. H2b you work the same job like a golf course of something similar for ten months so almost four seasons.

The h2b doesn't allow you a chance for citizenship either.

The whole other thing the work visa should allow you a chance at citizenship.

The moose said:

Not really yes you advertise said job for so long without filling you are granted the visa workers you need.

The real issue is that the jobs are grossly underpaid. But your visa employees you now get to be their landlords because you supply travel and housing. You get to take back a huge amount of their pay putting four in a two bedroom or more now turning real profit with the rent if you buy the rental property and their labor but that amount of pay wouldn't pay for an American to rent a one bed room dump.

It is all a horrible circle. Used to stagnate wages and not pay living wages to Americans in America.

I am sure others might not see it the way I do it is all a scam.

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I'm not in full agreement for the h2b visas -- when Alabama and Georgia started cracking down on migrant workers a couple years back, farmers couldn't find anyone to do the work even at increased wages, so a lot of them lost crops in the fields that just went bad.

But I'm in full agreement when talking about h1b. *That* system gets abused terribly by companies just wanting to lower wages of American workers who are quite willing to do the work. I saw some time ago a report about a company that was running a conference on how to take advantage of the system by putting in the salary as part of the job requirement: basically, put all the actual job skills down but then one of the job requirements was a salary at say 1/2 the going rate for those skills -- then when you cannot find a US worker willing to work that cheap, turn to the H1B system and save tons of money on skilled technical labor.

V Chip said:

I'm not in full agreement for the h2b visas -- when Alabama and Georgia started cracking down on migrant workers a couple years back, farmers couldn't find anyone to do the work even at increased wages, so a lot of them lost crops in the fields that just went bad.

But I'm in full agreement when talking about h1b. *That* system gets abused terribly by companies just wanting to lower wages of American workers who are quite willing to do the work. I saw some time ago a report about a company that was running a conference on how to take advantage of the system by putting in the salary as part of the job requirement: basically, put all the actual job skills down but then one of the job requirements was a salary at say 1/2 the going rate for those skills -- then when you cannot find a US worker willing to work that cheap, turn to the H1B system and save tons of money on skilled technical labor.

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I agree all of the immigrant visa programs are really to not pay a living wage for work.

You would like to think that Trump's south Florida club could have paid a living wage and not need 80 h2b employees.

The corporate world needs to pay humans enough to survive point blank close the loopholes that are only to drive wages down for everyone.

I don't know where you guys are from but here in New Orleans we have place that I always thought had a sheriff office cop out side for our safety. Nope that place had all the grunt kitchen work done by people in Orleans parish prison. The officer was watching the side of the building to make sure he didn't loose a dish washer.

It would be different if the prisoners were offered jobs after they are released but nope. After I got a new neighbor that worked there I was filled in on how all that worked. I was shocked.

Now this place is packed constantly it is a new Orleans institution they can pay kitchen help a living wage yet they don't. Scams like that and others need to be shut down.