Well, I think it is just a natural inefficiency in the market that a 3rd worlder will work much harder than a native because they're not used to the quality of life we have. They will work on weekends, nights and do so for less. So if natives want to "compete" with them then they're going to have to compromise their standard of living and wage expectations.
But yes getting to your overall point, the multi-decade standard of living extraction of wealth and middle-class living standards probably plays a role in people having less kids and thus low-end economic migration needs to pick up the slack. As cost of living has risen and barrier to entry to a middle class lifestyle has declined then the void had to be filled by imported cheap labor.
I could probably have typed that better, but yeah the root cause is probably wealth extraction and gov't policy (healthcare, higher ed., entitlements, ss, medicare, etc.)
As far as economics being the driving force, it might be about more than that but I sortof just always figure "Follow the money." Not even sure which view is more jaded. Sure it is a (un)healthy combination.
A job like crop picking in 110 degree weather is just not something Americans are going to do unless you practically double the wages for that, which would drive the costs of fruits and vegetables much higher. So some labor does have to be "outsourced" even if it takes place in our own country. Think of it like a better version of free trade I would say.
Amen.
Patsfan, you'd be surprised what people will do to survive if their safety net is taken away. Boy, whoever might have guessed people in Hawaii would rather earn $60k for staying at home than $8/hr for picking pineapples in the midday heat? Take away the former, and the latter suddenly doesn't look so bad if it's the difference between eating and starving.
$60k annually for Hawaiian welfare recipients. Unfuckingreal. I wonder if some genius husband and wife loser couples managed to combine their benefits and approach, if not top, $100k.
You still have supply and demand and people will gravitate away from the toughest jobs unless wages are better. This would make food costs higher.
No different than if Apple made end of assembly iPhone production for $9 an hour instead of $2 that the price of your electronics would go up.
There is obviously value in having people do menial tasks dirt cheap. But that is getting off topic.
I wouldn't be surprised because I never indicated people wouldn't work those jobs if "they had to". The fact of the matter is even if you eliminated all welfare tomorrow, the wage for those jobs would still not be as low as it is because you can get 3rd worlders to do it cheaper and in this particular instance it benefits all of us with cheaper food costs. Tons of other jobs poor people would just do, service sector stuff, etc...
Point taken re higher food costs and iPhones, but with the welfare state no longer a financial burden, the savings in taxes for the productive sector would more than make up any increases in the cost of living.
As for the idle, they would have to adapt and work...or starve. No more artificial labor markets means no more illegal peasants debasing the culture.
Works for me.
Yeah I agree with all of that. The crop picking was an extreme example obviously. Doesn't apply to hospitality or food service or other low wage jobs that used to be non-illegal 25-30 years ago.
I linked this before but it got lost in the shuffle but this is a pretty good rundown of everyone that supports illegal immigration beyond just Dems looking for voters. Big reason Trump made so much headway on the issue, the others were just out of touch.
http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...ort-illegal-immigration-working-class-suffers
Ted Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act: The War On America Turns 50
Ann Coulter
September 30, 2015
Half a century ago, Democrats looked at the country and realized they were never going to convince Americans to agree with them. But they noticed that people in most other countries of the world already agreed with them. The solution was obvious.
So in 1965 -- 50 years ago this week -- Sen. Ted Kennedy passed an immigration law that has brought 59 million foreigners to our shores, who happen to vote 8-2 for the Democrats.
Democrats haven't won any arguments; they changed the voters. If anything, the Democrats have stopped bothering to appeal to Americans. The new feminized Democratic Party says, That's too bad about those steelworkers in Ohio losing their jobs, but THERE'S A WOMAN AT A LAW FIRM IN NEW YORK CITY WHO DESERVES TO MAKE PARTNER!
Republicans should be sweeping the country, but they aren't, because of Kennedy's immigration law. Without post-1965 immigrants bloc-voting for the Democrats, Obama never would have been elected president, and Romney would have won a bigger landslide against him in 2012 than Reagan did against Carter in 1980.
This isn't a guess; it's a provable fact. Obama beat Romney by less than 5 million votes in a presidential election in which about 125 million votes were cast. More than 30 million of Obama's votes came from people who arrived under Teddy Kennedy's immigration law; fewer than 10 million of Romney's did.
The 1965 act brought in the poorest of the poor from around the globe. Non-English-speaking peasants from wildly backward cultures could be counted on to be dependent on government assistance for generations to come.
Kennedy and other Democrats swore up and down that the new immigration law would not change the country's demographics, but post-1965-act immigrants are nothing like the people who already lived here.
As Pew Research cheerfully reports, previous immigrants were "almost entirely" European. But since Kennedy's immigration act, a majority of immigrants have been from Latin America. One-quarter are from Asia. Only 12 percent of post-1965-act immigrants have been from Europe -- and they're probably Muslims.
Apparently, the "American experiment" is actually some kind of sociological trial in which we see if people who have no history of Western government can run a constitutional republic.
As of 1970, there were only 9 million Hispanics in the entire country, according to the Pew Research Center. Today, there are well more than 60 million.
We've already taken in one-quarter of the entire population of Mexico, most of whom seem to live in Los Angeles. For the last decade, nearly half of all felons sent to California's prisons have been Hispanic, according to the Department of Corrections.
In 1970, there were only a few thousand Haitians in America. Today, there are nearly a million. Miami beaches and New York parks are suddenly littered with goat heads from Haitian voodoo rituals.
In 1970, there were virtually no Somalis in the United States. In the past 25 years alone, we've brought in more than 80,000 Somali refugees -- and more than half of those since 9/11. Recent headlines out of Minnesota: "Minnesota ISIS terror suspect pleads guilty to conspiracy," "February trial date set for Minnesota ISIS terror suspects," "The Twin Cities have an ISIS problem."
(Possible new GOP slogan: "We'll cut your taxes, as long as these voodoo priests and refugees approve it.")
In 1960, there were about 200,000 Muslims in the U.S., according to a study in the International Journal of Environmental Science and Development. Today, the U.S. census estimates that there are more than 6 million Muslims here. Muslims are expected to surpass Jews as the second-largest religion in America in about two decades.
No country has ever simply turned itself into another country like this.
With the media cheering the end of America and businessmen determined to keep importing cheap labor, Democrats don't even bother hiding what they're doing.
Democratic political strategists Ruy Teixeira and John Judis have been gloating for 20 years about how post-1965 immigration would soon produce a country where Republicans could not win an election, anywhere. Then Democrats could do whatever they want. They called the new emerging majority "George McGovern's Revenge."
In today's America, George McGovern would be a moderate Democrat; Jimmy Carter would be a two-term president; and we'd be holding primary debates at the Walter Mondale Presidential Museum and Library.
Any GOP candidate for president who wants to increase immigration -- i.e., all of them except Trump -- ought to be required to first pass this simple test: Be successfully elected governor of California on a platform of tax cuts and social conservatism.
The Democrats got the voters -- and the country got 9/11, Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon bombing, clitorectomies, an explosion of gang rapes, child rapes, sex tourism, slavery, voodoo, Russell Brand, billions of taxpayer dollars stolen in Medicare and Medicaid scams, an epidemic of heroin deaths, soccer, bankrupt school districts and hospitals, overcrowded prisons, and endless tax hikes to pay for all the immigrant services, as small town after small town goes all-Mexican, or all-Somali or all-Hmong.
The people coming in aren't the ones exulting about "the browning of America." It's smug liberals who want America to be humbled and destroyed. The cultural left is overjoyed at the remaking of our society into one that is poorer, browner and less free.
These changes are entirely the result of government policies that were never debated, much less put to a vote. Americans have not been consulted on the question of whether to turn our country into some other country. Never mind what we're doing. You'll thank us later.
I know it's gauche to consider what Americans want, but how about the immigrants? Presumably some didn't come only for the welfare, crime and terrorism opportunities. They decided to move to the United States -- not Mexico or Somalia or China -- because they wanted to live in America. If our current immigration policies aren't stopped, they're going to wonder why they bothered.
Great post. The Immigration Act of 1965 was treasonous, worse than Johnson's 'Great Society' or the
'Tonkin Gulf Resolution' which made Johnson even a poorer POTUS than Obama in my opinion, and yes
his partner in crime was 'the swimmer' himself Ted Kennedy.
Trump's 'Make America Great Again'may make AMERICA BETTER, but he'll never bring it back tohere it
was before Johnson's treasonous immigration policy. And to think this hideaous bill replaced the Immigration
Bill od the 20's which was forcefully championed by the fine statesman William N. Vaile of Colorado the most
prominent of the restrictionists:
'Let me emphasize here that the restrictionists of Congress do not claim that the “Nordic” race, or even
the Anglo-Saxon race, is the best race in the world. … What we do claim is that the northern European,
and particularly Anglo-Saxons made this country. Oh, yes; the others helped. But that is the full statement
of the case. They came to this country because it was already made as an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth.
They added to it, they often enriched it, but they did not make it, and they have not yet greatly changed it.
We are determined that they shall not. It is a good country. It suits us. And what we assert is that we are not
going to surrender it to somebody else or allow other people, no matter what their merits, to make it something
different. If there is any changing to be done, we will do it ourselves. (Cong. Rec., April 8, 1924, 5922) '
