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Comment by quacked | Hacker News Reader

A 4.5M unit shortage wouldn't be present if the past several administrations hadn't allowed huge amounts of immigration in the past decade. Reality isn't constrained to "you have to build as fast as possible since your population is going to increase very quickly and there's nothing you can do about that".

If every person who came to the US in the past ten years went home, there would be a colossal increase in housing availability and rent prices would crater.

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And prices for much of what we buy would instantly double. The US is addicted to cheap immigrant labor for a huge number of jobs that Americans largely aren’t willing so do.

Yes; the increase of prices alongside domestic labor cost is part of the necessary "immune system of capitalism" that is suppressed by immigrant labor. If a first-world business cannot survive without offering very low wages, it needs to die off and make way for new businesses, even if that lowers material product and service availability.

> The US is addicted to cheap immigrant labor for a huge number of jobs that Americans largely aren’t willing so do.

Maybe more like "business owners are 'addicted' to paying cheaper wages that only immigrants from poor countries are willing to do at the offered rate."

For better or worse, US consumers are addicted to the low prices those low wages enable. Just look at how upset people are at the relatively modest inflation of the past four years. Thats nothing compared to the shock that ending immigration would create.

Since we live in a democracy, such a plan would be swiftly reversed because of the pain it would cause.

Immigration into the US was curtailed in the 1920s and then reopened in 1965. This period was one of relative wealth for the middle class. Since the late 60s to early 70s, the middle class has suffered an ever-decreasing quality of life. It doesn't seem like a foregone conclusion that reducing immigration will necessarily lead to a decrease in quality of life. Increase in the cost of some items (the ones whose price hinges on cheap immigrant labor) would be met by increase in wages, especially for people in the lower socio-economic rungs.

> For better or worse, US consumers are addicted to the low prices those low wages enable

You cannot convince me that low prices require low wages when companies are raking in record profits. We could have better wages, the same prices and lower profits. That is a sacrifice I would be happy to have businesses make

Who do you think is building the houses that are being built? Without immigration we'd still have massive housing shortages because internal migration is much larger than external migration -- people moving from the hinterland to cities with jobs. But housing would be a lot more expensive because we would no longer have cheap labour to build & renovate our houses.

This is the constant refrain of pro-illegal/poor/migrant immigration. My answer is: "in the first world, businesses should operate by offering competitive wages, and the lifestyle costs of first worlders should be balanced against those wages". I am uninterested in living in a materially wealthy society that can only operate on the back of a recently-arrived serf class, and it's bizarre to me that so many people defend this system as desirable and morally righteous.

"serf class"? Immigrants to America come here because they choose to. They're not serfs, they're not locked to the land. They move freely, and at much higher rates than other Americans do.

Okay, "serf" was the wrong word, since they are indeed not bound to parcels of land under a feudal government.

What do you think about the content of my point?

I think it only applies to illegal immigration, not legal immigration.

immigrants come because they have no better choice

that's called exploitation

No it's not. We're offering additional choices to the immigrants, all the moral blame lies on the people who are persecuting the immigrants so much that they are forced to flee.

Yes, we often exploit illegal immigrants, but legal immigration is not exploitation.

given the context of paying less than what residents are willing to work for I assumed we were talking about undocumented folk, in which case i would say moral blame lies with bosses willing to pay under the table

Those people would still exist though, just live in places with (even) less possibilities. And even without immigration, the first world is still very dependent on low cost labor, because of all the material goods produced abroad.

> Reality isn't constrained to "you have to build as fast as possible since your population is going to increase very quickly and there's nothing you can do about that".

If all of the job growth is happening in select metro areas around the country, the existing domestic population is going to move into those areas, regardless of the level of immigration

This is true, but "Americans aren't able to move to major metropolitan areas because it's too expensive" is an easier problem to solve than "every year there are 800k-1.4M new people to house, and they tend to also want to go to the major metropolitan areas".

Fortunately there is a lot of job growth outside the major metro areas. Look what's happening now with oil and gas extraction in North Dakota or plastics manufacturing in Ohio.

I believe you are correct that if every immigrant of the last ten years left the US abruptly, rent prices would be among the things that would crater, yes.

Are you suggesting that 10 years of immigrants going home would be a net positive for the US?

It depends on what "net positive for the US" means. There would be immediate product and service shortages and lost intellectual capital, but a huge explosion in available housing, spots at universities, open jobs desperate for labor, etc.

I use the dramatic case of "all immigrants going home" to illustrate that immigration affects the housing crunch and it's ridiculous to talk about it without mentioning the population increase. Personally I think the government should intensely crack down on illegal immigration, destroy business that use illegal labor (even if that's to the detriment of the consumer), and then make legal immigration tuned to attract high-skill immigrants easier.

Immigration has always been big and has gradually picked up speed. The idea of immigrants going home does not make any historical sense, neither does stopping immigration.

What do you mean that it doesn't "make any historical sense"?

We've never done it that way -- there's no historical precedent. America has done well, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to change that particular thing so radically after over 130 years of similar, but varying, immigration rates to today.

So would the economy.

There is some truth to their point. The economy in aggregate is receiving the benefit of immigration labor (through reduced labor costs and inflation) while socializing the harm on everyone who is competing for this housing (because, obviously, there are only so many affordable housing units available). There is probably a discussion to be had about governing immigration quotas according to available (not planned, available; hope is not a strategy) affordable housing. This would internalize the externalities currently being shifted around on the macro balance sheet.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/17/immigrants-help-economy-job-...

A close relation of mine worked in a very, very high-up position in the Department of Agriculture. He has been farming-adjacent for his entire career, and years before he joined DoA he explained to me how meatpacking and butchery has slowly been taken over by a central set of massive corporate conglomerates who destroyed competition in the beef industry by pricing then out.

All of these major central corporations are completely dependent on illegal labor, and if they hadn't been able to pay lower wages, their takeovers couldn't have occurred at the speed or scale they did. My relation talked about this issue in the DoA and many senior officials pushed back and said that since addressing this issue of illegal labor in the beef industry would cause a rise in beef prices, threatening the availability of the migrant labor base is a no-go. (Biden admin, not that it matters--I'm sure the answer would have been the same under any admin through at least GWB).

That's where we are now, in US agriculture, residential construction, etc.. Prices must be kept low, and therefore the stream of low-skill desperate labor must not be turned off. Massive companies enjoy enduring near-monopolies because no one is willing to threaten the comfort of the American consumer.

All excellent points, a fair assessment of the situation. But, I would also say corporate profits of these firms rely on this low skill desperate labor that cannot organize and will not speak up (versus being shipped back to whatever terrible place they fled from). ADM, Bunge, Tyson, Koch Industries, etc are what come to mind in the ag sector, but is certainly not all inclusive.

I don't have a solution, but I hope smarter people than me with leverage figure it out, because it isn't sustainable.

The problem is the people running the show don't care if it's sustainable. They just want to get theirs and get out. Earn enough money and you can insulate yourself from consequences

There's far too much of this happening across all sectors, including government

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