Alarm spread through California agricultural centers Tuesday as panicked workers reported that federal immigration authorities were showing up at farm fields and packinghouses from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley.
Now, here’s something I’ve been pondering about this line of thought.
I believe that everyone should be paid a fair wage for a fair days work. Which means that I really don’t like the fact that immigrant laborers get paid pennies compared to what an American laborers would.
But obviously raising pay for immigrants would be effectively the same thing (from a business accounting perspective) as just paying the Americans higher wages, which by your own comment would raise prices.
So I’m curious to see where you stand on this. Because to me there are a few end results and none of them are particularly amazing.
Limit any jobs to American citizens or legal immigrants. This transition would be hugely detrimental to the current agriculture industry, and the higher salaries demanded by citizens would increase prices further.
Raise immigrant prices to be in line with citizens. This would also raise prices.
Continue with the status quo. The current status quo is horribly exploitive and needs to be changed.
Lower citizen pay to be in line with immigrants. This would just never fly. You’d never be able to higher a citizen at the same rates they are paying immigrants
Force companies to take a lower margin to absorb the higher pay. But this is just a dumb idea for lots of reasons and would never work in the “real world”™
This is a genuine comment too. Like I said, I feel like the best route is to just increase pay for immigrants. But that has the same result on the end consumer.
I believe the solution to a lot of problems in America is enhancing social mobility. If immigrants want to work in United States fields, and the farm owners can’t pay a living wage, then the only fair tradeoff is some other form of compensation.
Work for a set period of years, and once that is complete, programs are made easily available so those people can pursue education, entrepreneurship, and a path towards permanent residency or citizenship. After the initial working period, they would also be entitled to minimum wage, which would encourage a transition into a higher paying job of some kind, even if it is just a leadership role on the farm.
If a company is caught hiring illegal immigrants to skirt these rules, the company should be punished harshly and publicly shamed as if they were trying to hire slaves—that is essentially what they are doing in that case, diet slavery.
I believe this would provide a path that would be available to any able bodied immigrant who wants to work to start their journey in the United States while also setting them up for a future where they would not be disabled by poverty and exploitation. It would also meet the demands of manual labor in America, and open the door for increased profits by businesses who chose to hire immigrants.
Of course, the social mobility aspect should apply to citizens too. US citizens should get advanced education for free so that they can prosper in their own country and not feel like a job has been stolen from them by an immigrant taking up some of the hardest manual labor roles in the country. There is no reason that any American should be undereducated to the point of needing to pick fruit in the California sun.
I’m honestly not sure. I’ve lived and worked in developing countries, so I have seen what happens when someone gets sent to another country for work. Remittances are very high, and can lead to a better quality of life for those in the home country. That’s certainly not guaranteed though.
My comment was about addressing the barely disguised racism of “they’re stealing our jobs”
This is hardly a U.S. issue though. Dubai has south and southeast Asians, Malaysia has Laotians and Cambodians, Italy has Albanians, Argentina (before it went to shit) had paraguayans, Spanish Guardiennes have been a thing forever in Paris, on and on.
Force companies to take a lower margin to absorb the higher pay. But this is just a dumb idea for lots of reasons and would never work in the “real world”™
Okay, I’ll bite (even though I think this is impractical)
How would communism guarantee that illegal immigrants and citizens both are paid fairly without any impacts on the end consumer? And remember, I am asking for real world solutions here, so “everyone just owns everything and sings songs together” communism isn’t gonna work here.
And again, I’m not trying to be snarky. I am genuinely trying to come up with actual solutions that I could recommend in real life.
The illegal immigrants would have a union and if they’re not being paid then they’ll organize until they are. Citizens would also have a union. The end consumer will probably be impacted sometimes.
Now, here’s something I’ve been pondering about this line of thought.
I believe that everyone should be paid a fair wage for a fair days work. Which means that I really don’t like the fact that immigrant laborers get paid pennies compared to what an American laborers would.
But obviously raising pay for immigrants would be effectively the same thing (from a business accounting perspective) as just paying the Americans higher wages, which by your own comment would raise prices.
So I’m curious to see where you stand on this. Because to me there are a few end results and none of them are particularly amazing.
This is a genuine comment too. Like I said, I feel like the best route is to just increase pay for immigrants. But that has the same result on the end consumer.
I believe the solution to a lot of problems in America is enhancing social mobility. If immigrants want to work in United States fields, and the farm owners can’t pay a living wage, then the only fair tradeoff is some other form of compensation.
Work for a set period of years, and once that is complete, programs are made easily available so those people can pursue education, entrepreneurship, and a path towards permanent residency or citizenship. After the initial working period, they would also be entitled to minimum wage, which would encourage a transition into a higher paying job of some kind, even if it is just a leadership role on the farm.
If a company is caught hiring illegal immigrants to skirt these rules, the company should be punished harshly and publicly shamed as if they were trying to hire slaves—that is essentially what they are doing in that case, diet slavery.
I believe this would provide a path that would be available to any able bodied immigrant who wants to work to start their journey in the United States while also setting them up for a future where they would not be disabled by poverty and exploitation. It would also meet the demands of manual labor in America, and open the door for increased profits by businesses who chose to hire immigrants.
Of course, the social mobility aspect should apply to citizens too. US citizens should get advanced education for free so that they can prosper in their own country and not feel like a job has been stolen from them by an immigrant taking up some of the hardest manual labor roles in the country. There is no reason that any American should be undereducated to the point of needing to pick fruit in the California sun.
I’m honestly not sure. I’ve lived and worked in developing countries, so I have seen what happens when someone gets sent to another country for work. Remittances are very high, and can lead to a better quality of life for those in the home country. That’s certainly not guaranteed though.
My comment was about addressing the barely disguised racism of “they’re stealing our jobs”
This is hardly a U.S. issue though. Dubai has south and southeast Asians, Malaysia has Laotians and Cambodians, Italy has Albanians, Argentina (before it went to shit) had paraguayans, Spanish Guardiennes have been a thing forever in Paris, on and on.
⚒️
Okay, I’ll bite (even though I think this is impractical)
How would communism guarantee that illegal immigrants and citizens both are paid fairly without any impacts on the end consumer? And remember, I am asking for real world solutions here, so “everyone just owns everything and sings songs together” communism isn’t gonna work here.
And again, I’m not trying to be snarky. I am genuinely trying to come up with actual solutions that I could recommend in real life.
The illegal immigrants would have a union and if they’re not being paid then they’ll organize until they are. Citizens would also have a union. The end consumer will probably be impacted sometimes.