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When i see this kind of posts, i tend to ask myself : does being on the left wing mean you're ok with illegal immigrate workforce being exploited in your fields and farms ? Just so you have cheap products AND go easy on your consciences ?
Immigrants are good. Exploiting them is bad.
That sounds like all the more reason to be for legal immigration and against illegal immigration.
All the more reason to be for legalizing immigration and against illegalizing immigration.
Focusing on the immigrants rather than the system puts the blame in the wrong place, and obfuscates solutions to the problem.
The GOP won't pass legislation for more legal immigration. Our economy relies on immigrants, so it means that we are reliant on illegal immigration to function.
What I don't understand is why Republicans are against having a permanent legally exploitable underclass which is what we currently have.
“They’re taking away our jobs!” ? Although I think it’s about power - if you’re not reliant on other countries, then you don’t have to take other things into consideration. You can be selfish and do selfish things.
But having illegal immigrants do hard work for basically nothing is the selfish thing.
...but we are reliant on other countries. We import over 15% of our food and these changes are going to drastically reduce our output. We will only start relying more on other countries.
You seem pretty confident that’s the end goal of the politicians.
Allowing so many illegal immigrants to do these jobs just goes against those who are working or wanting to work legally and allows those illegal immigrants to be abused to hell and back because of their status. If more workers are needed as in not enough local workers, sure I guess you could alleviate that with legal migration. But solving it with rampant illegal immigration is hell for everyone involved.
But I feel like much of the worker issue is solved with better work conditions and better pay. At some point that becomes untenable for sure but some sort of rethink might be warranted if an industry doesn't work without decent living conditions and without abusing illegal immigrants for pennies.
If the problem is that some immigrants are categorized as illegal and some are not, why not get rid of that categorization? If companies are not paying people enough, why not just add a minimum wage?
The problem is that the current system does a poor job handling these cases. As a leftist, it makes more sense to me to make laws to fix the issues as opposed to saying it would be hard to make changes without law changes or inconveniencing owners who like paying shit wages to immigrants, better keep the current system that is causing human suffering to continue.
It's not very realistic in the world we live in to just have everyone come in. It will become unmanageable for everyone very quickly. If you want to have a better avenue for the existing illegal immigrants to become citizens, sure, but you'll also need some stricter immigration control since that's a massive callsign for more illegal immigration. And soon you'd have the same issue even worse.
If the solution is to just change the system, I'm all for it. I just see it happening anytime soon. So trying to make things better now while waiting for the system to change, that is much more manageable and likely to happen, so at least do that imo.
So if your problem is that we might have too much immigration. Do you support cracking down hard on farms that use illegal immigration labor?
Or is that also too much to ask?
Because at a certain point if it's all too much to ask, your position from a utilitarian, is legitimately keep everything the same.
Do you support cracking down hard on farms that use illegal immigration labor?
Well of course? That seems like an obvious step to take. Crack down on existing illegal practises and move to prevent them from happening.
Most people on the left are in favor of giving the immigrants we all rely on official status, giving them the same legal protections as other workers. That can be through making the legal immigration process easier or a guest worker program.
only when it allows you to do cheap gotchas on the right /s
The US built itself up on immigration since the beginning, and most impactfully over the past hundred years with "brain draining" the rest of the world. "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" and all that. I don't think it's a stretch to say most of the US's success comes on the back of these immigrants with 40% of Fortune 500 companies being founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.
But the economy has changed since that poem was inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. The US has become primarily a service industry demanding skilled laborers, relegating manual laborers to the lower class along with the illegal, and often unskilled, immigrants.
So you're a blue collar American living in Appalachia, vying for the same factory job that your dad and his dad held and were able to afford a middle-class lifestyle. Except now groceries are getting hard to afford, fueling your truck hurts, and your new neighbor is a programmer who wanted a country home to relax in and work remote and finds your accent charming. You know you're now at the bottom of the ladder, and you think the illegals willing to do your work at half the price are the cause. So deport all the imigrintz! Bring back white America! Make America Great Again! /s
I don't have all the answers, but I think we should continue to restrict unskilled immigration and continue making it risky for companies to hire illegal immigrants, while offering a path to legality for those having been here for 5+ years. Raise the minimum wage, effectively securing a better lifestyle for those at the bottom (immigrant and native). Make some better/strategic investments in Central American countries so that people there have a better lifestyle and it isn't worth it for unskilled labor to immigrate. Hell, build some manufacturing capacity so we're less reliant on China.
Everyone prospers, America continues brain-draining, and the world keeps turning.
Not risky. Suicidal. They find you have "illegal" immigrants working for you? You get a fine so big you have to close your business from prison.
The other option: legalize all those immigrants and they become the owners of the business.
It is like that but it’s not always like that. Hispanic workers at a food factory a friend of mine worked would talk about hitting up blueberry picking season as a side gig in the summer.
when you get past your cryptic pseudo-profound wink wink question, what exactly are you trying to say?
Well we certainly can't be for open boarders. pauses for the gasps and pearl clutching
I'd personally love a path to citizenship instead of turning illegal immigrants into slave labor which is absolutely coming next. I'm guessing you're one of those people that like to trot out this high-and-mighty shit a lot while downplaying the consequences of what's actually happening.
I mean, that's specifically why I'm left wing. I don't want to pay people a fair wage. I want to exploit people on my farms and the left will fight to ensure I can.