Trump vows to deport millions. Builders say it would drain their crews and drive up home costs.
Trump vows to deport millions. Builders say it would drain their crews and drive up home costs.
While some contractors dismiss the plan as political rhetoric, many say they can’t afford to lose more people from an aging, immigrant-dependent workforce still short of nearly 400,000 people.
While some contractors dismiss the plan as political rhetoric, many say they can’t afford to lose more people from an aging, immigrant-dependent workforce still short of nearly 400,000 people.
Both presidential candidates promise to build more homes. One promises to deport hundreds of thousands of people who build them.
Former President Donald Trump's pledge to "launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country" would hamstring construction firms already facing labor shortages and push record home prices higher, say industry leaders, contractors and economists.
"It would be detrimental to the construction industry and our labor supply and exacerbate our housing affordability problems," said Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. The trade group considers foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, "a vital and flexible source of labor" to builders, estimating they fill 30% of trade jobs like carpentry, plastering, masonry and electrical roles.
You're viewing a single thread.
The idea has also drawn skepticism on logistical grounds, with some analysts saying its costs would be “astronomical.”
This is like being skeptical that Nazi Germany would send people to death camps because it would be too expensive.
Bryan Dunn, an-Arizona based senior vice president at Big-D Construction, a major Southwest firm, called “the idea that they could actually move that many people” out of the country “almost laughable.”
Societies have been able to move millions of people around since they developed railway systems.
What's almost laughable is the state of denial people are in.
Last year, the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, enacted a series of restrictions and penalties to deter the employment of undocumented workers. Many immigrant workers hastily left the state even before the policies took effect, with social media videos showing some construction sites sitting empty.
This is the best case scenario in theory. Immigrants would flee to safety before the US government could harm them. However, in practice, where can they go? Many people already come here because their home countries are too dangerous for them.
This gets to a broader point. I've seen a lot of discussion in the past about trying to flee the country if things go wrong. There isn't going to be anywhere to flee to that's any safer if the US becomes a christo-fascist dictatorship. The EU is going to have to fend for itself against Russia. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will be on their own. Unrest in North America, South America, Africa and Asia will only get worse. We are seeing a global rise of fascism along with dictatorships becoming bolder and more willing to challenge the international order. Anyway we slice it, the only good outcomes involve fascists staying out of power.
People simply don't care. The amount of times people talk about fleeing the country vs even changing their local government is completely out of whack. People don't try, expect to move somewhere else and not try and not have their problems follow them.
People simply don’t care. The amount of times people talk about fleeing the country vs even changing their local government is completely out of whack. People don’t try,
People have an instinctual flight or fight response to danger. And it's rational for an individual to consider flight in the face of the most powerful military in the world. Discussions about safety are important. Most discussions I've seen qualify the need to flee based on Trump taking power. Most of the people who participate in them are explicit in their intentions to vote for Kamala and the Democratic Party in general.
I for one would like to see more discussion about changing governments. However the issue is less a lack of caring or lack of trying.
expect to move somewhere else and not try and not have their problems follow them.
It's more as this gets to, a lack of perspective. People are thinking in terms of their own self-interest. Specifically themselves and the people they care about in their immediate social spheres. This is human behavior in a nut shell. People are not considering the broader context, in part because we've never had fascism at a global scale before. Even in WWII there were limits to the reach of fascist nation states, some continents saw little to no direct conflict at home.
What we are seeing now is unprecedented in history. If the US becomes a christo-fascist dictatorship we are going to see the world completely divided into sphere's of influence. Dictatorships will become completely unchecked as the US switches from maintaining the world order to expanding it's sphere of influence in the western hemisphere. A war with Mexico is not out of the question in this scenario. Neither is Canada falling to it's own far right.
The rise of the far-right isn't unique to the US, it's been happening in India with Modi, Milei in Argentina, and in the Philippines with Bongbong Marcos. The far right is taking power and entrenching themselves all over the world. Modi and friends in India are buying news outlets to keep them toeing the party line and spewing propaganda. But unless a person is a political news junkie they can easily miss all of this broader context. People aren't being informed about the global rise of fascism, so they aren't discussing strategies that reflect that.
But again the rise of the far right is a reaction to the many flaws of how liberalism was done, that alienated citizens of the own countries in the chase for lower costs. A discussion about dealing with the far right necessitates a discussion of slowing down the export of work/import of labor and promoting internal jobs.
I also blame Business Schools for not showing independent thought and propagating Jack Welch creative accounting shit
We need to abandon fascism, neoliberalism, capitalism, and minority rule democracy. What we need is social democracy and we need it in every country, because it is currently the best system we have. We can have a global economy, but the rules we play by can't allow some groups to exploit others or fail to redistribute wealth when there are economic winners.
I also blame Business Schools for not showing independent thought and propagating Jack Welch creative accounting shit
Scanning his wiki page he seems awful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch
Welch's practices and legacy were criticized as ultimately self-destructive and a bad influence on corporate America by author David Gelles in his 2022 book The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America―and How to Undo His Legacy.