> Illegal border crossings on the southern border are down 78% and blue collar wages are rising. Of course correlation does not equal causation, but when there are fewer available workers to hire/train and demand remains constant, wages tend to rise.
was marked dead. Why? Is the illegal crossing number wrong/fake news?
Was in 2001 prior to 9/11 in south Indiana. I applied to a factory. And another one. And another one. Nothing. No bites. I then found work at a gas station Subway across the first factory. Our primary business were the factories.
9/11 happened. Within days, the factories shut down. We at subway were like "WTF happened?" Cause we were staffed like normal for rush.
Then we talked to one of the workers who stayed - there was a huge implicit threat that INS was going to make nationwide sweeps deporting all illegals. So, they left ahead of time. And "gee golly" the factories were now hiring and one said they had better wages.
Again, its correlation kind of.. Well not really. Supply and demand is a pretty hard rule. And when you have undocumented, working for less than minimum wage, and foregoing regulations on employees, is anyone surprised?
I know I understood the blue collar hatred of illegals. I've been on the receiving end of that. Not that its right, mind you- but understanding others viewpoints is the start of fixing them.
(Fixed spacing, from making comment on phone.)
Or are those jobs just a small part of "blue collar".
There's a whole class of blue collar under that. Line workers, food prep, factory pickers, non-medical health aide, framers, concrete pourers, roofers...
I know when my parents had their current house built, they had a bunch of hispanic people working on the house. When my parents went to take pictures, they beat feet to get out of any photo. My moms pretty sure they said something about INS. But who knows.
My parent's didn't care too much that likely "illegal to work peoples" were building their house. It was cheaper than the other options.
Honest question: why not? I have a lot of members of extended family who have gone through a LOT of pain to become legal immigrants in the US, and they hate the illegals exactly because illegals have broken the rules that they have payed so hard to follow.
If an agent A sacrifices it's profits to follow the rules and agent B just violates them, why shouldn't A hate B? (You can imagine A and B being the company who sacrifices profits to follow environment regulation and another company who just forges emission tests, for example).
I value human rights more than I value state or federal "rights". And in this case, there's more than enough resources to go around.
And a second derivative answer - not everyone who came here had a choice.
Oh please. You damned straight it's perverse.
How is this not perverse when a director of an agency on aging has to tell elderly clients "Sorry, there's no more money for food this week." ?
How is this not perverse when homeless try to get shelter for the night, and are turned away because there's no beds?
How is this not perverse when we train upcoming high school students to agree to crushing scholastic debt with no recourse or bankruptcy protection?
How is this not perverse that we don't have a true medical system across the USA? Instead we tie it to employment, thus continuing the "Work or Die" ideal, quite literally.
> There may be "enough" resources – but they aren't yours to go anywhere. And freedom to do whatever you please with the things you own is the most fundamental human right of all.
Sure, I'll accept that for simple possessions. Clothes, personal effects, lodging, transportation.
But whereas you're talking of personal stuff, I'm talking about the top income whose top 3 people own collectively more than the bottom 50% of the world. I guess when you can afford to amass money, game the system, buy laws/legislators and rig everything, you do end up with more money. But "it was hard earned". Yeah, uh huh. Keep telling yourself that.
Capitalism fails for many. It succeeds for a very few, with most stuck in the cycle of "Work to live, live to work". It's not much different than a slave or indentured servant class where for the necessities of life; Instead of a single owner, I must find an owner who will take me in.
And if you fall through the cracks, it's almost impossible to move back up. I'm sure you can find a Horatio Alger story or 2. They're popular in this country.
Lose your job? You're not guaranteed a job.
Business closes? Too bad.
Area stricken with poverty because industry left? Well, too bad.Can you elaborate?
> Capitalism fails for many.
Once again, if you fail, it doesn't mean that the system fails. The system's goal is not to make your life good. Why would it be?
And I refuse the very premise you're working with. We're only as strong as the weakest members. And I see those members begging on the streets, or wandering around because of untreated psychiatric issues. Or they're living in tents off in the back part of the city park.
There's always going to be someone with more, for whatever reasons. But there should be nobody homeless. There should be nobody going hungry. There should be nobody without medical treatment.
I'm not going to budge on those issues. Higher rights exist building on TOP of the essentials. Look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Even YCombinator is doing a program/test on UBI. To pretend it's not an issue is completely absurd.
> The system's goal is not to make your life good. Why would it be?
Because, unless you're independently wealthy and can live on residuals for the rest of your life, you're only a few accidents away from destitution. We live in a world of plenty, but allow monied interests to amass it and control access. Why?
And that money can be used to buy influence and laws to further entrench themselves. That argument is "Its my money and I got it and you cant have it", regardless if it's illegal or paid-off "legal" means. This is the might-makes-right argument and principle. And it's time we re-evaluate if this makes sense. I have a feeling that most people will find it absurd, as I do.
What "we" are you talking about? These members are not my family members or friends; what you're doing is abusing other people's empathy to push your agenda through emotional means instead of rational.
> But there should be nobody homeless. There should be nobody going hungry. There should be nobody without medical treatment.
Why on Earth is that an invariant on society?
As long as the goods required to survive (food, housing etc.) don't materialize out of thin air, it makes sense to expect people to work for them.
And I agree and disagree with you. Yes, we can make you, governmentally speaking. However there is a different way out: automation and robotics.
We could live in a society that we strive to make more and more automated solutions so that all can benefit. Solar means effectively free power. Food generation allows food to be made so cheaply that the cost is inconsequential. Transportation, same thing. (Yeah, you might not "have" a car, but you can summon one whenever you need.)
If you want to rehash old failure modes of capitalism, so be it. It's a 300 year old system that's bursting at the seams with failure modes everywhere. Communism isn't exactly much better - in that system you trade one master for another.
A mix of socialism, capitalism, and a healthy amount of automation would work. And the machines that produce essentials should be owned by all of us, with the benefits from these going to all of us.
That would maintain no forced working by people, maintaining freedom, AND cover the essentials of all citizens. No?
Of course it's right to hate people who have no respect for your country's laws and have a meaningful negative impact on your quality of life. You're trying to make it into a racial issue to excuse people who make life worse for blue collar workers. It's also why they hate politicians: they aren't making decisions that benefit blue collar workers. (Starting with NAFTA.)
More than half of immigrants are on welfare: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/01/immigr...
Who knows how crazy the expense is for illegals.
People should stop abusing opioids, but we should also make sure they don't cross the border into our country.
This crosses into political ranting which is definitely not what we want here. Thoughtful discussion, please, or nothing. We've had to warn you about this before.
That doesn't mean you can't express your point of view, just that you need to try an order of magnitude or two harder to do it with respect. This means respect for the ones you're talking to, for the ones who have reason to disagree with you, and for the community at large. That takes effort and practice, but it's an effort many of us have made, and it turns out to be pretty satisfying as well as a way to make the community better instead of destroying it.
With that said, I do feel like it is incredibly relevant to this post. From what I could tell, it's at least not a grossly inaccurate claim[2] and could partially explain the increase in lower class wages.
edit: to those downvoting me, can you please explain why? What did I say that was inaccurate?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[2] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/apr/...
I'd imagine the direct correlation is the ratio of US wages to Mexican wages. US wages have been poor for so long, migrants see less benefit. Migration might go on the upswing as wages rise and jobs are harder to fill.
Given that they’re illegal, how could we ever know if the number is down or if they just found some other way to cross the border?
Also, it would be quite foolish to think there is only a single factor affecting wages. There are a multitude of factors, and a reduction in the number of illegal immigrants might be one of them, although it’s hard to be sure.
http://www.thehour.com/business/article/Wageless-U-S-recover...
Also, talk and data are different things.
There are surrogate measures that we can use.
Traffic numbers are a good one in Southern California. When there are crackdowns/bad economy, the traffic decreases markedly. Gasoline sales drop. Those are hard numbers that the state collects.
Money transfer services have to report. Those numbers are recorded.
Just because someone is illegal does not mean they have no impact. This cuts both directions: positive and negative.
That comment was killed by software because the commenter was banned (more or less; it's a bit complicated) for having abused HN in the past.
Employers are supposed to have employees fill out an I-9 form that verifies employment eligibility, but the penalties for noncompliance are at most $1,100 per form -- basically slap on the wrist territory [2].
The irony here is that the anti-immigration wing of the Republican party is now in open conflict with the business wing of the party, which benefits heavily from hiring ineligible workers for low wages.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Verify#Operations
[2] https://www.thebalance.com/i-9-form-employment-eligibility-v...
If you really doubt that illegals can work in manufacturing, try googling for 'immigration bust factory', or similar stories.
Oh wait...
You're right - you do need a valid name/SSN/birthdate. It doesn't have to be yours. And if a company wants to be disreputable, all they need to do is keep running them until they hit jackpot.
Because then they can claim that the other people were, uhhh, fraudulent. And this person passed their Everify. It's not like there's any proof that the Everify was run 10 times prior, to find a good name/ssn/DoB.