In the last two weeks I’ve heard two separate interviews, one of a Florida citrus grower and the other of a guy who built rental properties, saying that they supported increased immigration to the U. S. explicitly for the purpose of reducing wages. They started off by saying that they couldn’t get the workers they needed but ended up saying that without a steady stream of new immigrants other employers hired their crews away from them at higher wages.
Do people listen to themselves? I guess not.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We can be a country of higher wages and lower immigration or one of higher immigration and lower wages but we cannot be a country of higher immigration and higher wages. It just does not compute.
“Couldn’t get” and “hired away” are fundamentally different states of the world.
I’ve been meaning to ask what is the overlap btw/ people who
(a) want more immigration, and
(b) believe we are entering a world with few jobs (robots, etc.)?
Both of these views appear to be held together by many people, but don’t seem to be part of a consistent worldview.
(a) want more immigration, and
(b) believe we are entering a world with few jobs (robots, etc.)?
Both of these views appear to be held together by many people, but don’t seem to be part of a consistent worldview.
Every tech billionaire believes this. And the views are entirely consistent with the prior stated belief of the elites of all stripes that the future belongs to the country that can provide the most skilled workforce, and therefore we should import as many low-skill/no-skill peasants as possible into the country. In particular, low-skill/no-skill peasants who are highly unlikely to have children & grandchildren who will be much different than their immigrant forebears in terms of skills.
But it only doesn’t make sense if you assume these advocates of importing the entire fucking Third World actually want the country to have high-skill, high-wage workers in a country with high employment. They want exactly the opposite of that, so that they can live like the nobility while everyone else begs for crumbs. Ideally, all the really rich people get to live like Louis XVI does in Mel Brook’s History of the World: Part One. “I love my people. Pull!”
Again, after seeing this behavior for decades, one either has to assume the people that have risen to the top of the heap are either completely stupid, or completely evil. You know which way I vote.
The additional complication is the emphasis in our immigration policy on family reunification. Even if you bring in the smartest, best-educated people in the world they all have unskilled spouses, brothers-in-law, etc. whose immigration they’ll sponsor.
“We can be a country of higher wages and lower immigration or one of higher immigration and lower wages but we cannot be a country of higher immigration and higher wages. It just does not compute.”
That’s one of the great contradictions of progressive political thought – their underpants gnome strategy to link higher immigration and higher wages is unions.
I know this probably sounds more cynical than even ice, but if you turn your prism 90 degrees and assume the immigrants will vote predominantly Democrat, then Obama, Hillary, progressive etc position is perfectly rational. Playing for the long game. The corporatist Republicans? Playing with fire for a presumed seat at the table. And the unions, the low to moderate skilled Americans? Hey, a few eggs will have to be broken.
Regarding the contradiction that PD pointed out, I think it’s possible that the end game is for Democrats to start pushing for a guaranteed income, so glutting the labor supply is actually a means toward that end.