Comment by 2000UltraDeluxe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 2000UltraDeluxe | Hacker News Reader

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2000UltraDeluxe

Just to make sure there's no misunderstanding, please note I'm a first, second AND third generation migrant.

The problem is that "we" need people to do the dirty jobs we don't want to; wait tables, mop floors, clean toilets, change diapers for the elderly, and so on. Most of those jobs come with a fair deal of risk of physical injury or verbal abuse and the pay is usually crap. What makes you think that migrants would be content with those jobs when we refuse to do them ourselves?

Besides, in large parts of Europe, Eastern Europeans have already grabbed most of the decent jobs available to foreigners. The millions of Ukrainians currently fleeing the war will grab what's left once they start settling in and become available on the job market. In that situation, importing a vast amount of African youth into several generations (at least) of low social status is both cruel and unneccesary.

There's definitely reason to revisit the way we look on migration, but flooding the market with cheap labour is not going to solve anything. We need to reform the labour market and automate the jobs that cannot be made into decent ways of making a living. Other shitty jobs will need to have working conditions improved until the jobs themselves are worth taking.

Most of the Ukrainian refugee population consists of women and children at least for now, and in women's case, they are not particularly drawn to hard manual work, these open jobs will ultimately need be filled.

Low wages is a problem that will fix itself. When there was a shortage of truck drivers, wages for truck drivers went up.

That’s how a market economy works. If there aren’t enough people willing to do a job, then wages for that job will go up until there are.

Nothing you said is wrong, or unfamiliar to me. The recent lorry driver shortage in the UK, and European truck driver comments about how Britain treats long distance drivers (disgusting toilets, abusive behaviours towards drivers) are just the most recent example of jobs british people won't do, and assume foreigners will do for low pay.

Or field work. Or nursing, in the sense of general nursing duties not necessarily high paying theatre and post operative recovery nursing, although Britain needs them too. No, I absolutely do mean the disgusting, dirty, low paid menial jobs that western working class poor people won't do.

That's the story of migration to the USA, the ubiquitous Mexican labour in hotels, cleaning, cafes and bars, meat works that keeps America working.

I absolutely agree "flooding" the market won't help. I'm talking about a 25 to 50 year problem here.

All migrants are exploited at some level, even H1B. They need unions as much as anyone else.

You're not wrong about the next five years. There's going to be a lot of racism at play, and right wingers like Orban and Le Pen will make much of it.

But the underlying economic truth I believe in remains: the west needs migration more than most people realise, and immigration and refugee law is regressive and unhelpful.

Oh, migration is well underway; Russia's making damn sure of it.

As for fixing the job market, we need to raise the status of the low-status jobs rather than consider people as commodities where you can just get another source rather than solving the supply issues. Importing people straight into the lower classes will just grow the lower classes, with all the downsides that has to offer; crime, prostitution, political or religious extremism, etc.

One thing at the time: Make working in a nursing home an acceptable occupation rather than something that's done by the most desperate. Service personel should be valued, rather than threatened or constantly pushed down. When the guy who pays someone else to mow his lawn stops looking down on the guy who mows it, that's when we can start considering attracting foreign labour to fill positions. If it's still a problem at that point.

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